The Logic of Atheists vs. Theist Arguments

[josephpalazzo]

Suckers?  Those gals aren't lame ... like taking candy from a babe

Duh, the Chordettes are not cliché.

[Unbeliever]

I haven't found anything more powerful as an idea than Feynman's propagator - it's going to be in my next book...

I googled Feynman propagator, and found out it's not a species of reptile in the bayous of Louisiana!

Can you explain it without so much math? I'm not afraid of the math, but I don't know what all the variables stand for. I see there are other propagators, what's special about Feynman's?

I'm interested in the time evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe. I've been wondering whether time is the element of gravity that's different from the other 3 forces that makes it so unlike them. I wasn't aware that there was a time element in QFT, so I'm looking forward to learning something about it.

[Absolute_Agent]

It is an opinion held by some scientists,

Some scientists are of the opinion that science and religion are complementary.  And those particular scientists just happen to be members of the National Academy of Sciences.  And they just happened to issue a formal signed document to this effect.  And it just happens to concur with one of the greatest scientific geniuses in history.  And I just happened to agree with them.  So many coincidences...  Must be a complete random accident Blackleaf. [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]

Deus summus

[Absolute_Agent]

Still using bullshit as a substitute for actual facts and reproducible data, I see.
Good grief, no! I want a hunky studmuffin who knows what he's doing!

Well, okay, two hunky studmuffins.  And I want them now, not in an alleged afterlife for which there's not the tiniest shred of evidence.

TMI.  I offered you a mathematical discussion the last time and you weren't interested so don't add hypocrisy to closed-mindedness.

Deus summus

[Unbeliever]

Some scientists are of the opinion that science and religion are complementary.

But they don't specify any particular religion, just religion in general. A religion that claims certain things happened that didn't happen, or vice versa, that claims as matters of fact things that could not and did not happen, then that religion is not compatible, much less "complementary" with science. The meaning of the word "religion" can be very broad, indeed.

[Baruch]

I googled Feynman propagator, and found out it's not a species of reptile in the bayous of Louisiana!

Can you explain it without so much math? I'm not afraid of the math, but I don't know what all the variables stand for. I see there are other propagators, what's special about Feynman's?

I'm interested in the time evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe. I've been wondering whether time is the element of gravity that's different from the other 3 forces that makes it so unlike them. I wasn't aware that there was a time element in QFT, so I'm looking forward to learning something about it.

Joe might be the only one who can.  I studied QFT about 7 years ago, and didn't get much out of it ;-(

[Absolute_Agent]

But they don't specify any particular religion, just religion in general. A religion that claims certain things happened that didn't happen, or vice versa, that claims as matters of fact things that could not and did not happen, then that religion is not compatible, much less "complementary" with science. The meaning of the word "religion" can be very broad, indeed.

Blah blah blah.  How's that for broadness?

Deus summus

[Mike Cl]

Blah blah blah.  How's that for broadness?

Deus summus

that is exactly what you have been giving this board from your first post.  If you are anything, it is blah, blah, blah...........

[josephpalazzo]

Can you explain it without so much math? I'm not afraid of the math, but I don't know what all the variables stand for. I see there are other propagators, what's special about Feynman's?

Not to go into great details, QM is a probability theory. You express a quantum state with the wave function. Easy example: the z-component of spin states, with two states - up and down. If you write down the wave function correctly, it should give you 50% up, 50% down. This happens when you pass a beam of electrons into a magnetic field. Initially, the spin of each electron is random. After measurement, you get the 50-50 observation. Less easy case: passing electrons through a double-slit. These will land on a screen, giving you a pattern. Here position is not discrete as in the case above, but continuous. So your wave function, a function of position, nevertheless will give you the probability of where the electron will land on the screen - a distribution you can find in any google search.


In QFT, there are major changes: the wave function gives way to a field operator. But how we now calculate the probability undergoes an even greater change. This is done through a propagator: you look at the state of a particle say at point x, which will propagate to point y. In words, it's easy said, mathematically, it's very involved. You end up with a particle whose mass is offshell- another technical term. Basically, a free particle's mass is onshell - it obeys Einstein's energy equation, the one that gives E=mc2, for a free particle. So we started with a free particle at a point x, it propagates to point y, but in that interval, it doesn't act like a free particle. This is where all the interesting things in QFT happens. I'm not going into more details as it would require me to go into Lorentz Invariance, unitary, representation theory, gauge theory, renormalization, and so on. And a lot of Feynman diagrams...

[Blackleaf]

Some scientists are of the opinion that science and religion are complementary.  And those particular scientists just happen to be members of the National Academy of Sciences.  And they just happened to issue a formal signed document to this effect.  And it just happens to concur with one of the greatest scientific geniuses in history.  And I just happened to agree with them.  So many coincidences...  Must be a complete random accident Blackleaf. [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]

Deus summus

Some scientists think science and religion are compatible, or at least not in conflict. And? There are scientists who think they are opposed to one another too. How does this help your case? You seem to be arguing against your own point right now. You're making no sense. You were pushing the idea that science is anti-religion. I said they are unrelated to each other, which is what the person you quoted also said. Is your attention span so low, you haven't even noticed you switched positions?

[aileron]

Some scientists think science and religion are compatible, or at least not in conflict. And? There are scientists who think they are opposed to one another too. How does this help your case? You seem to be arguing against your own point right now. You're making no sense. You were pushing the idea that science is anti-religion. I said they are unrelated to each other, which is what the person you quoted also said. Is your attention span so low, you haven't even noticed you switched positions?

To be honest, I don't think many scientists really think religion and science are "Non-overlapping magisteria" as Gould put it. I think they're just trying to get religious nuts in politics and the public off their backs in their particular domain to leave room to explore.

Religions make definite (and might I add incompatible) statements about the origins and structure of the world and life. Many of these come into direct conflict with science. Unless we want to say such and such scientific topic are off limits, it's hard to see how they won't conflict.

I'm not talking about the Renaissance either. Stephen Hawking claims Pope John Paul II told physicists they should not explore the origins of the universe because that is God's domain. Fundamentalists in the US would be tickled pink if they had the power to imprison anyone teaching evolution.

[Blackleaf]

To be honest, I don't think many scientists really think religion and science are "Non-overlapping magisteria" as Gould put it. I think they're just trying to get religious nuts in politics and the public off their backs in their particular domain to leave room to explore.

Religions make definite (and might I add incompatible) statements about the origins and structure of the world and life. Many of these come into direct conflict with science. Unless we want to say such and such scientific topic are off limits, it's hard to see how they won't conflict.

I'm not talking about the Renaissance either. Stephen Hawking claims Pope John Paul II told physicists they should not explore the origins of the universe because that is God's domain. Fundamentalists in the US would be tickled pink if they had the power to imprison anyone teaching evolution.

Well, yeah. I said earlier that the only time science and religion clash is when religion makes falsifiable claims. In those cases, it is not science trying to discredit religion (as if the two are rival faiths), but religion conflicting with the real world. Even in cases where scientific theories contradict religious myths, such as with evolution, there are religious people who accept the science and just claim that their religious text isn't being literal. Some Christians do not see the story of Adam and Eve as a historical event, for instance. When it comes to the core of what makes the religion, such as the existence of gods or the afterlife, science has no opinions.

[Hydra009]

Athiests think they are free of dogma.  If so, why do they keep quoting atheists of past times?

Reasons to dislike atheists

*shuffles deck*

They quote people they agree with

[Simon Moon]

Some scientists are of the opinion that science and religion are complementary.  And those particular scientists just happen to be members of the National Academy of Sciences.  And they just happened to issue a formal signed document to this effect.  And it just happens to concur with one of the greatest scientific geniuses in history.  And I just happened to agree with them.  So many coincidences...  Must be a complete random accident Blackleaf. [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]

Deus summus

I am as close to absolutely certain as possible, that if you asked any of those signers of the formal doc, if: there was a worldwide flood, Mohammed flew to heaven on a winged creature, that angels visit people in caves, that people can resurrect after 3 days, Jinn exist, that we're all descended from 2 original man and woman, Muhammad split the moon in 2,  Noah was 950 years old, stars are missiles for Allah to throw at devils, etc, etc, etc, and all the other scientific absurdities in the Bible, Qur'an, Vedas, etc, they would not be so quick to say that science and religion are compatible.

[aileron]

Well, yeah. I said earlier that the only time science and religion clash is when religion makes falsifiable claims. In those cases, it is not science trying to discredit religion (as if the two are rival faiths), but religion conflicting with the real world. Even in cases where scientific theories contradict religious myths, such as with evolution, there are religious people who accept the science and just claim that their religious text isn't being literal. Some Christians do not see the story of Adam and Eve as a historical event, for instance. When it comes to the core of what makes the religion, such as the existence of gods or the afterlife, science has no opinions.

I think this lets religion off the hook too easily. It's making a distinction between an interventionist god and a god of the gaps. It's one thing to say that science is or should be silent on the god of the gaps, but it's quite another thing to say why it is or should be silent.

The god of the gaps is a hypothesis. Any hypothesis that has to be highly fine tuned and ad hoc rescued over and over again deserves no serious consideration from science. Why exclude this hypothesis?