Where was God?’ ask refugees from Georgia warBy MANSUR MIROVALEV ?ALAGIR, Russia (AP) ? Sarmat Kapisov ran all night through the forest with his family, fleeing the fighting in South Ossetia and headed for the Georgia-Russia border. On his back, the 17-year-old carried his brother, who has cerebral palsy.”It wasn’t easy,” Kapisov said, huddled alongside his mother and seven siblings, who have taken refuge here at an Orthodox convent across the Russian border.The convent director, known as Mother Nonna, said thousands have passed through since the bloodshed began one week ago in the pro-Russian separatist province claimed by Georgia.Most were South Ossetian women and children on their way to a refugee center set up inside a summer camp by Russian authorities. Many of the fathers and older brothers stayed behind to fight.Mother Nonna said she had never seen so many terrified children clinging to their mothers’ skirts.”The most difficult thing was to answer their question: Where was God?” she said. “They had so much fear in their eyes.”
I am not trying to diminish the horror felt by anyone who is displaced from a war being waged by or on their government. However, I did want to mention the whole idea of people being unprepared for real tragedy because they think an invisible man in the sky is somehow in charge.So here is the assertion du jour — religion IS harmful even at a moderate level because it allows the believer to avoid reality, thereby being unprepared for when reality hits. If they expect a miracle, and one never comes, how can they be prepared? There is hope, but then there is crushing disappointment when reality sets in.
Neowolfe
I can’t make any sense of that sentence. Care to clarify?
Neowolfe
Really? Who?
Definitions are subject to interpretation. I assure you all, god is dead, as if god ever really existed, I mean other than within some peoples minds. Sound like a contradiction? Well, Christians are a contradiction. Pro life my ass, I see thru you all like a piece of dirty glass.
Frank Rizzo, Obeah, What, neowolfe, jstaceykeith, everybody, yes, yes, all good food for thought. It sometimes is correct to argue from a culturally conditioned perspective. When in Rome speak as the Romans do. Gods do exist in many peoples minds but I assure you god is dead and dying and nonexistant and never was. Say it ain’t so.
What is happening in Georgia is a prelude to the invasion of Iran by America, Israel, France and Britian. The Russians are jockying for position. America is presently maneuvering more naval battle groups into the Gulf which will rival the first gulf war. Hope you’ve enjoyed gas at a lousy $3.68 a gallon because if it jumps off in Iran, you’ll soon be coughing up a chunk of change to roll down the highway. You confused Christians may get your Armageddon after all.
It’s this mindset that created the dark ages; however, in the dark ages, ignorance was a tool the church used to maintain control; most people were it’s victims. Greatbean actually CHOSES ignorance when knowledge is available. Greatbean, your mind is a terrible thing to waste. Stop it!
Does anyone else hipocrasy in the USA advising against warlike activities?
Correction-Does anyone else SEE THE hipocrasy in the USA advising against warlike activities?
What,
There is no room for the arbitrary in logic, and everything you’re proposed so far contains it.
Cynic,
I assert that I absolutely disbelieve in the Easter Bunny given the definition that it is a member of the order lagomorpha and that it is the only known monotreme belonging to said order, it lays eggs identical to those of a chicken in every way exept that they are dyed in a way aesthetically pleasing to humans and naturally come hard-boiled, and it is capable of visiting nearly every home in America simultaneously.
I assert that deities are transitively related to the Easter Bunny. Equal amounts of evidence exist for both. Both are equally likely to be conceived purely by humans, both are equally likely to have had lies concocted by humans to “prove” their existence, and all artifacts that are used to support the existence of either are all made by humans.
I concude that neither exist on the grounds that they the transitive relationship between the two.
I’ve always prefered the ones that lay Cadbury Eggs myself. The problem atomictesting is that there is a very clear and important difference between confidence — even extreme confidence — in the existence or non-existence of something and the certain knowledge of it. Because it is necessarily practical to place limits on what we accept or don’t accept, I agree with your reasoning that there isn’t an Easter Bunny.
But, as they say, absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. With gods, elves, and the Easter Bunny, all we can do is invalidate categories of definitions — disprove claims of miracles, account for the actual source of colored eggs, etc. When it comes to attributes that border on the supernatural, all we can really do is be confident — not certain.
Cynic,
Magic is supernatural, the tooth fairy is supernatural, and so is picking pockets. After reading the bible I can assure you there is no god, never was a god and never will be a god except within some peoples minds.
When lack of evidence falls on someones shoulders it will be Christian shoulders. Some of the evidence I have is everything Jesus Christ has not done and never will do because he doesn’t and never did exist.
The ignorant, hate filled men afraid of the dark just happened to borrow and embellish other peoples folk tales and place themselves as the central characters. It’s malarky, there are few positive morals in the bad book.
There were no doubt other creation stories, which preceded the plagerized Jewish folk tales, that were then burned by Christians. Christianity gives guilt, fear and sorrow in an attempt to sell salvation. With certainty, god does not exist. I’ll be back Thursday.
Cynic
What are you talking about. I simply can not understand your posts. Are you saying once again that there aren’t multiple logics? If you are then you are wrong. See for example Quantum Logic. The famous philosopher Dewey rightly pointed out that the rules/axioms of logic are not self evident. We use them – just like any other tool – because they have worked well. That is, they give us predictive power. Other logics could do better.
All “logics” are based upon a certain foundation, and that foundation is what I refer to. The rest are build from this, and pointing out the limitations of one formulation over another cannot invalidate root of both. Otherwise you’d have to concede things like “a=a” as merely opinion.
Cynic
You don’t make any sense.
russia has every right to secure its border.nato broke its word not to expand now it is trying to bring in georgia,ukraine.to hell with bush he supported kosovo seperatists so why can’t russia support osettian seperatists.i love america but i also love my better half who is russian.the neocons are turning the whole world against us with their insane lust for power.
Reason
Ditto!
The neocons have been working hard to pin this all on Russia. Just reading Wikipedias entry on Georgia should make the situation clear to Faux News viewers.
John “Keating Five” McCain said last week: “We are all Georgians now.” I have never seen a presidential candidate as stupid as McBush on foreign policy issues.
So you’d accept a “logic” that stated “a!=a”?
Cynic
Did I say I would? You are not making sense.
Cynic
Our present understanding of the universe says that “a thing either is or isn’t” is not a valid statement. Things exist in a superposition of eigenstates. An ideal measurement forces them into one of the set of eigenstates. Since no measurement is ever ideal things are always in superposition states and the measurement process simply decreases the “spread” in the state of the thing.
Things can exist in a superposition of “is” and “isn’t” states.
What you’re talking about are interpretations, not logic, not facts. Interpretation isn’t evidence, but the result of what we learn from evidence. Whatever the realities, at any given point in time (and time is another subject altogether), it may be A, B, C, or A, B, and C, or anything you might want to dream up. And at that point in time, it is what it is. At some other point in time, it may be something else. At each point, equal to itself.
Without a consistent form of reasoning, we are powerless to interpret evidence. Therefore, redesigning the way that a logical system works based on what evidence you discover is madness. Logic is a tool, nothing more — and nothing less. Toss it out and any interpretations made are inherently arbitrary and useless.
No doubt you’ll think that makes no sense, but I assure you — that’s all you.
Cynic
Huh!? Interpretation of what? You contrast interpretation with logic and facts as though logic and facts are the same thing. Huh!?
No its not. Interpretation is a useless and futile exercise that attempts to assign meaning to a theory beyond what the theory actually states.
What the?
You really should take a class or read a book on classical logic.
and the greatest philosophers and scientists of the past 200 years. I’ll take it!
There’s obviously no point in discussing this with you, What, until you understand that philosophy is defined by the fact that what is produces cannot be proven, that a theory is defined by the idea that it tries to explain “why” and not “what” (which is the job of laws), and there is no circumstance in which a logical fallacy can be ignored (regardless of what some philosopher you admire told you to allow his pet notion to advance).
I’ve had the logic class you suggest and then some, What. Your problem is that you didn’t understand what you took.
Hmmm… where was their god here? They go to church to praise it, and then it takes their child:
http://www.wgal.com/news/17223479/detail.html
just me
The video said “in the hustle and bustle of collecting their belongings and herding the older children into the house, they forgot their 15 month old daughter sleeping in the van.”
HOW do you collect other belongings, but forget your baby?!
And no charges are being filed? Not even negligence? It could be negligent homicide! Are they being easy on them because the dad is an asst. pastor? Or because the family is devastated?
If they had left the baby in the bathtub alone and she drowned, it would be no different. I’ll bet someone would be charged then. Why do people get off for baking their children alive in a hot car?
But I guess it’s OK, because she wasn’t a fetus.
It’s wearing off a little, but when I was a newer parent, reading stories about people forgetting their children in cars used to scare me because I sort of see myself doing it. It’s like locking your keys in the car (only far more horrible). You’d have to be an idiot to do it, but you know, it happens.
Cynic
Really? Show me philosphy text that defines philosophy as such.
Wrong again. Theories answer the question “What predicts?”. The “Why?” question is for folks, like religious freaks, that like to contemplate the untestable and therefore less than wrong hypotheses.
Point out where I have ignored a logical fallacy and under which logic it is a fallacy?
Learn about two state quantum systems (eg. a spin 1/2 particle in a magnetic field) and then get back to me about the “is or isn’t” question. It isn’t difficult to understand and I could help you if you like
.
What,
We have a system of thought that produces proof. It’s called science. Time was, most of what we call science today used to be lumped into “philosophy”, but gradually the distiction became clear. To most.
In science, a theory attempts to explain why one thing happens and not some other thing. A law merely explains what does happen, as it has been observed. Note the relationship between the laws of gravitation and the theory of relativity — and the notable lack of a coherent theory of gravitation. Laws cannot tell you why things happen, only that they do. Theories attempt the why.
What?
Law: An apple will bonk you on the head if you sit under it long enough.
Why?
Theory X: Because the collective mass of the planet has warped space-time, producing an potential energy gradient in which you were sitting at a lower point before the stem disconnected.
Sure, there’s always another “why” to ask, but that doesn’t make them all some philosophical nonsense questions.
Given your propensity for generating said logical fallacies (fallacies of defintion, hasty generalization, slippery slope, Loki’s wager — just to name a few recent ones), I needn’t bother looking any further than your own words. Either you commit them without knowing it, or you know it and ignore them. Damned either way, yes?
The fundamental problem with most QM scientists (and, apparently, you) is that they fail to recognize that just because they don’t know the answer to both location and trajectory doesn’t NECESSARILY imply that it doesn’t have one. It only means that because they can’t know that, they have to resort to other methods of investigation.
Somehow along the way to learning all of this, people get turned around and start thinking that because the results are seemingly chaotics, that they underlying reality must be, in fact, chaotic. But you cannot prove that logically. Randomness is an illusion, the number 12345 being potentially equally “random” as 14253.
That’s why, if you’re going to play the lottery, it’s a waste of time to pick the number by hand. And that’s why it’s a waste of your time to throw quantum physics at me in a futile attempt to explain why logic fails: because the only path that leads to such a conclusion is via logical fallacy in the first place!
Cynic
Where do I start. You are wrong about the difference between laws and theories. They are all theories.
Thanks for clearing that up for all us physicists. Read about the Stern Gerlach experiment and get back to me about your profoundly ignorant statement “doesn’t NECESSARILY imply that it doesn’t have one” and “It only means that because they can’t know that, they have to resort to other methods of investigation”. I realize that QM is difficult for some people.
Cynic
The “underlying reality” is not chaotic. It is governed by the DETERMINISTIC Schrodinger equation (for NRQM).
This one is funny:
Count the things that you have stated above that are simply not factual. There are multiple consistent logics. Do a little work and read up on them.
Do yourself a favor and don’t bother communicating with me about QM until you have taken a few graduate courses or have read Dirac, Messiah, and Cohen-Tannoudji’s books on nonrelativistic QM. Then read Mandels and Zee’s books on QM Field Theory. Then get back to me to talk.
Actually, you can’t prove that the universe is deterministic or nondeterministic. I expect determinism is a reasonable default assumption supported by parsimony, but an assumption it is and must be.
I’m not going to chase after every QM bone you choose to throw until you can state in a logical argument — using whatever bit of physics you want, but no hand-waving shortcuts — how it is that logic has been ever shown to been falsified.
If you want to cite a bit of evidence, go ahead — but don’t just assert the thing, demonstate how it implies something. I expect when we’re done here that what this is all going to come down to is you’ve assumed something so deeply and so thoughly that even you don’t realize it.
Cynic
QM is deterministic. I don’t know what you mean by prove. The word has little precise meaning outside of mathematics.
I didn’t say that logic has been falsified. What I have said is that there exist alternative logics each will be judged by their utility in our quest for predictive power. I brought up the Stern Gerlach experiment simply to demonstrate that your understanding of QM, as demonstrated in your above statements, is to put it plainly severely lacking.
Since you don’t know QM or the language of QM it will be difficult but not impossible to do this here. How would you suggest I proceed? Should I spend a few months here making posts with the hope that you will learn the basics of CM and QM? Should you do some assigned reading as I suggested and then get back to me? What is your mathematical background? What is your physics background?
That is a bizarre statement coming from someone that has made numerous unfactual statements about QM.
To be 100% clear,
Deterministic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism
Prove:
To show with 100% logical certainty. (Math and formal logic are offshoots of the same line of thinking, even if they appear to be unrealated.)
Most physicists point to QM and swear up and down that it shows that that universe MUST NOT be deerministic. You’re different, which is curious. I’m wondering how it is you know.