Grrl Power #417 – Gravitas check
Ok, this is a bit of a weird page, admittedly, but there’s a reason for it. Just planting deep seeds. :) As the undersecretary of ADHD folk myself, I wouldn’t blame anyone for skimming panel 1 a bit. Here’s a link to Sagan reading it out himself. If you’re the sort of person who is affected by powerful narration, prime your hanky. Personally I need to rehydrate after watching that clip. The TLDR version is “Earth is tiny and insignificant, people suck and we should do better.” Obviously Sagan’s version has slightly more gravitas. So much it can prevent light from escaping.
For those of you unfamiliar with what that picture is, it was taken from VGER Voyager 1 when it was 6.4 billion KM from Earth. Personally I think if all the halls of power in the world had a poster like this hanging somewhere prominent, people might be motivated to work together better, but perhaps that’s putting too much faith in humanity.
Deus genuinely did hang that poster at one point, as he says, to keep things in perspective, but sometimes the things meant to center us can have a divergent effect.
Sydney, as I’ve said before, is a bad liar. Not in the sense that she can’t keep a secret. She’s actually quite good at that. Usually. She has sometimes been known to get a case of blurtmouth, but not on anything critically important. Of course the best way to keep a secret is to never let on you know one. This is not Sydney’s area of expertise.
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Nice. I miss Carl Sagan.
So say we all.
Billions and Billions of us.
Interesting fact: Sagan never actually said “Billions and Billions”…
He was notable for saying Billions with a specific emphasis on the B, though. He always made sure to over enunciate that letter, to make it very clear that he was not speaking about Millions, but something a thousand times moreso. Cosmos had an awful lot of Billions strung through it; while he might not have said the exact line… well, here. Watch this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZmafy_v8g8
He had great pipes. A good combination with a keen mind and an insightful vision.
Neil deGrasse Tyson has the intellect, and the vision, and certainly the enthusiasm (which is the thing I love the best about watching him speak, his clear love of the subject matter draws me in to the immersion), but only good pipes.
Asimov said the only people he ever met who were just plain smarter than him were Carl Sagan and Marvin Minsky. Guess he never met Richard Feynman…
The only man I ever had a crush on, not counting my husband.
I get the feeling these two would enjoy a game of “I know that you know that I know” way too much.
And Halo really dropped the ball here. Any self respecting super villain keeps this poster around as an ultimate ” to do” list!
Does he know there are Aliens on Earth? Does she know he knows (or not)? Does he know she knows? Does he suspect she can see them? Does she know he suspects she knows?
Well, he does know that her yellow orb gives a crazy powerful truesight. That was reported to him by Harem.
He also knows about Dabbler. Therefore he knows about aliens.
‘Alexander cried when he heard Anaxarchus talk about the infinite number of worlds in the universe. One of Alexander’s friends asked him what was the matter, and he replied: “There are so many worlds, and I have not yet conquered even one.”‘
– Plutarch (“On Contentment of the Mind”)
Sort of makes you want to smack Alexander in his Great face, doesn’t it?
…you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist…”
“…but that’s just peanuts to space.”
And the only thing I’m wondering right now is “How many people reading this are going to understand what “VGER” is? Heck, how many people alive right now would get that reference?
Yeah. I mean, Star Trek is such an obscure bit of pop culture…
I never saw star wars or star trek, and don’t care much about either
Your choice.
I followed the original Trek religiously, watched TNG whenever I could (I was in college while the bulk of it ran originally), completely missed DS9, Voyager and Enterprise until they were over (Tho I binge-watched all of them after I got Netflix)… But I didn’t get to actually watch SW until after my kids were born (we didn’t have a VCR until 1995). I knew the *stories* (books and comics), but the original experience was quite late.
I had a point, but I’ve forgotten what it was.
Explain to me this Trek of the Stars?
Well Star Trek: The Motion Picture, has not aged well (I’m being generous and assuming the before I was born it at some point seemed less terrible) Even Star Trek V and Star Trek (2009) the undisputed low points of the franchise are better movies.
Between the plot points they didn’t include in the dialog, the clearly incompetent redesign of the Enterprise (lets make the transporters death traps and remove the ability to fire phasers while at warp) the beige on beige color scheme, and terrible acting. I just start people with The Wrath of Khan when introducing the TNG-era movies.
To be fair, while Star Trek is well known, Star Trek: The Motion Picture is much less so.
I guarantee you there’s a bunch of people who’ve skipped that one altogether.
My parents have seen ST:TMP at least five times.
They don’t remember ever seeing it.
Given that V GER is from the Motion Picture which came out in 1979, 37 years ago, quite a lot of people who were around when it came out would still be alive today. Anyone who’s 37 or older in fact, give or take a few months. How many of them would have heard of it? Well given that movie is repeated regularly on TV and is part of one of the biggest Scifi and film franchises there’s ever been…. quite a lot of them I’d think. Even my mother knows about VGER and she’s never deliberately seen a Star Wars or Star Trek movie, or an episode of Star Trek, just sat in the room when I’ve been watching :P
I doubt someone saw the movie when they were 0 years old. Better substract 15 years or so from your calculations
No need.
I was minus one when that movie came out (I was born during 1980), people can watch movies years after they came out you know. VHS, DVD, or, as I mentioned in my post, one of the many times that movie has been shown on TV.
I was 10 when I saw it in the theatre (it was one of the few, before I turned 16)…
I saw it when I was 26. On TV. Last year. I think it was on Scifi channel along with the other 9 movies.
That movie came out in 1979. It’s not even one of the good movies, either. Hate to say it but it IS kind of an obscure reference nowadays.
It may not be one of the good ones, but it was the *first*, and by that fact alone rather more memorable than later not-so-good entries like Star Trek V.
Weird. I knew about Star Trek. I didn’t find out about the movie until the Internet went above 56k for private use at a reasonable cost
Star Trek movies. yes. Sagan, I didn’t even know Saban of Power Rangers
Yeah I remember leaving the theater thinking “Well that was okay I guess.” and I’m a Huge Trek fan. Although the bald chick was kinda hot. Now a Kahn reference would be far less obscure. Really good movies get more recommendations and wider audience.
Dave, I think he just called you old…. GET HIM!!!! :P
I was 7 when that movie came out. I don’t think I saw it in the theaters, but I could be wrong. I honestly don’t remember. Heck, the “Sim Sala Bim” reference on the previous page is from way before my time too, but as a professional nerd, I like to keep abreast of the literature. :)
If you are referring to Hadji from Jonny Quest you left a “Sim” out of that “Sim, Sim, Salabim”
Yeah, I remember Hadji…A teenager who took the reference of his journey to the the Holy Land (the “hadj”) as his name. I used to watch it on the Saturday morning cartoons when I was a kid; still remember Race Bannon, Dr. Quest, Jonny & even Bandit!
I have to admit that I never even saw any of the newer series to come out quite a few years ago…Just the originals (1964-1965).
;)
The first time I ever heard of Johnny Quest was when an older friend of mine gave me his near-complete comic collection before going to college. All read an slightly worn, but still, very nice. I read through the set more times than I remember.
There were a few other comics as well, including adaptations of “The Black Hole”, “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”, and “Masters of the Universe”, the latter of which I must say was way better than the movie.
hrmm i used to buy them as they came out :) i was a bit to young to enjoy the tom swift goodness. funny that marvel will finally have the galactics in this next round. i am looking forward to seeing how they present lockjaw. /me waiting.
considering how many 60’s and 70’s TV programs kept airing in syndication for years after they were canceled something being before your time is not always a reason to have never heard of it.
I Dream of Jeanie, Bewitched, Gets Smart, Gilligan’s Island, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Are You Being Served, etc. All of theme were off the air before I was old enough to watch TV other then Sat morning cartoons, I watched all of them at some point growing up because of syndicated re-runs.
Maybe everyone? When I first saw ST:tMP and VGER was introduced, my first thought was that it sounded a lot like voyager. I was fairly disappointed to find out later that it was indeed Voyager (the proper noun version), and that the entire plot of the movie was nigh identical to the original series episode ‘The Changeling.’
The comparison has been around since the movie came out. I remember reviewers complaining the movie should have been titled “Where Nomad has gone before”.
Keep in mind VGER wasn’t THE Voyager, it was A Voyager. Voyager 6, to be precise. So far Only 1 & 2 have been constructed and launched. I haven’t been able to find any reference to NASA even planning others.
Yep, I remember Nomad…The hybrid space probe. Had a real problem with his memory…Electronic version of amnesia.
i literally LOLed when i saw the crossed out VGER in the comments. ^_^ love it! <3
…BESIDES, VGer was, like, Voyager 6, not Voyager 1. A completely fictitious Voyager successor launched a long time after the first.
Well.. it’s not so much a matter of anyone alive to have watched it.
It’s a matter of the rare person who sits through the entire god damned film to its end.
I do. :D
Star Trek: The Motion Picture failed on two counts.
1) Bloated Special Effects – way too much showing off to no good purpose
2) Science Fiction does not do well when it starts getting into God concepts, and this is quite definitely no exception.
Action packed it is not – it’s a very cerebral movie and those, in general, are very hard to do well, or even competently. All that said, I liked the movie quite a bit, most especially the idea that what separates a human from a machine, no matter how sophisticated a machine, is the capacity to imagine. Rational thought is cool, but dreaming takes us places rational thought cannot.
I grew up dreaming of communicators; we now have them. I grew up wanting a hoverboard; we’re getting *very* close. Battery storage capacity has more than quadrupled in my lifetime (might be more); power-cells for lightsabers is a big obstacle that we’re getting closer and closer to achieving. We’ve found out more and more about our universe using telescopes of all kinds floating in space, and we’ve just scratched the surface. Computers were the size of large rooms when I was born, now most of us carry around a computer far more powerful than those early computers in our pockets.
Star Trek, along with the space race to the moon against the Soviet Union, has been a major factor in all this. Science-fiction in general has helped, but Star Trek in particular espoused the best traits of humanity and dared to show and then decry our worst aspects. It gave us a vision and dared us to dream. No matter how horrible the human race is in our day to day efforts, we were given a vision of what we could be and we’ve chosen to pick that up as a goal.
Not always for the right reasons or using the right methods, but a goal nonetheless.
This is a major reason I haven’t lost all hope in humanity. :D
It’s not so much the power-cells for lightsabers that is the problem, but more ‘how to contain the plasma of the blade’
Also very true. :D
Although I don’t think light sabers are plasma – I think they’re a matter disruption field (visual evidence notwithstanding). They glow because stuff is getting ripped to atoms and occasionally releasing photons as excess energy.
Probably a little radioactive too, which jelps explain why they’re not more common. :D
Here you go. Real working lightsaber. In real life. We live in a wonderful time.
https://hackaday.com/2015/12/22/finally-a-working-lightsaber/
Getting..! So..! Close..!
Humans- tell ’em it can’t be done, they just get creative. :D
Also, crazy awesome link.
Og course, such a staunch debunker of all things concerning extraterrestrial visitations or the supernatural as Carl Sagan was, might seem a bit out of place in the Grrl Power world.
No, a realist like Sagan would’ve treated the reality of such things in the Grrl Power universe with wonder and delight, for that would mean that there were even more mysteries to explore.
Yes! The key difference between atheists and the religious is the ability to actually accept new facts and integrate them into your world view instead of mindlessly clinging to dogma ans superstition.
I have the sad feeling that most Christians, if faced by actual factual evidence, delivered by God himself, that Mohammad was his last prophet and that Christ was merely a good, if deluded, man, would reject that evidence from their deity and continue to believe that Christ rose from the dead and was the Son of God.
In all fairness, not ALL religious people are unable to accept new facts — the statistical majority, however, yes.
Also, in fairness, if the inverse happened, and God Itself (hell, we don’t even know if it would have a gender) somehow communicated in a verifiable, non-disputable, irrefutable way that “Jesus was my son, and he was the last prophet”, I suspect many Muslims would also refuse to change their views. Granted, it would probably be a smaller fraction that refused to accept it, because it seems like Christians in general tend to be less accepting of others’ religious ideas (it’s also possible that’s just American Christians, though…).
(I’m not counting Christian or Muslim Extremists in either of these examples we’re hypothesizing, because they’re all nuts.)
Oh I wasn’t just picking on Christians. That was simply an example. I believe that whichever religious were disproved by actual word of some God (as manifested in a way which could be proven, not some thousands year old book referencing ‘miracles’ which cannot be duplicated today by even those who claim to be the most devout) would still have a core of believers who would refuse to accept the new evidence and would maintain their beliefs even in the face of proof to the contrary.
There was a movie back in ’77 called “Oh God!” starring John Denver and George Burns. John was Jerry, a store manager, George was God who visited Jerry. In order to convince the clergy that he had spoken to God, they gave him questions to answer… all written in Aramaic. God translated the questions and dictated his answers to Jerry. “Was Jesus the true son of God?” “Yes. So was Mohammad, so was Budda, so are you. You’re all my children.”
I like that movie :)
I’d say that difference is more about scientists than just atheists. I wouldn’t call someone like Stalin (I think he was a failed priest who then became an atheist) the type of person willing to accept new facts :), while I’d say that even a religious person like Gregor Mendel would have been willing to accept new facts when he created the science of modern genetics despite being an augustinian friar who lived in a monastery all of his adult life :) Science is all about accepting new facts… then trying to disprove them heehee.
At the end of the day. science and religion have one big similarity. They both start with faith. Religion ends with faith but science has experimentation, study, and it finally ends with either proving or disproving the theory.
I dispute your assertion that science begins with faith, or that religion and science share faith as a similarity. Faith is the belief in things without evidence, that is literally what the word means. To have faith means that you not only do not test, you see no reason to test. You simply accept without any need for evidence.
Science is the opposite. Science is the testing of beliefs, the rejecting of those which are proven to be incorrect, and the adoption of those which can be proven to be correct. Faith plays no part in that process.
No, that is the difference between ‘Faith’ and ‘Blind Faith’: ‘Faith’ believes, but is willing to accept new ideas, ‘Blind Faith’ refuses to accept that there is even a minutest possibility of something else
You are splitting hairs. Faith is the believe in something without evidence. ‘Blind’ faith is? Seems to me as if it is the belief in something without evidence.
No creationist is ever going to believe that the Earth is older then ~6,000 years old, because that’s what their faith teaches them. And they have also been taught that all evidence to the contrary is just a test of their faith by their deity. I don’t care if you decide to call this ‘faith’ or ‘blind faith,’ I see no distinction between the two.
Not quite. I am a creationist and I do look at evidence. The difference is the starting point. We both have the same evidence that we can both use to back up our beliefs. I believe that almost all fossils were created in a short period of time in a worldwide flood and there was no death prior to man and sin; evolutionists believe that there was death prior to man and fossils were created over a long period of time.
Therefore, we can both look at the same evidence and see different things. You can find plenty of comparisons here. A summary of what I understand of the carbon dating argument: There is no evidence that occurrence of radioactive isotopes was the same in the past as it is now, nor do we know that half-lives are always the exact same across time for every radioactive isotope.
I disagree that I, quote, “have also been taught that all evidence to the contrary is just a test of [my] faith by [my] deity.” I am taught to seek answers, and answers I do seek. I have yet to find something that cannot be explained by the Bible (not to say I know and/or understand all of it) and there are things science has not explained that is explained in the Bible, such as the apparent age of galaxies compared to their shape. (How that light gets here is another question–one I have considered and not yet found an answer.)
Respectfully, the evidence is that the Bible is a compilation of texts from a wide variety of sources and inherently full of contradictions. To say nothing of the problems that have come from (mis)translations from one language to another over time, and the many ‘editings’ by various sources (eg. “Thou Shalt Not Suffer A Witch To Live” is now known to have been added by Church authorities some time in the Middle Ages).
As for Creationism, sorry but I was raised in a tolerant Christian family that still manged to have little respect for that belief system. The title of a book on the subject by one Dr Ian Plimer says it all, I think – ‘Telling Lies For God’.
Apologies. I probably sound more confrontational than originally intended on the above. I’ll now withdraw from this thread.
I think that science doesn’t involve faith at all.
Faith is believing in something in the absence of empirical evidence to support it or when faced logically inferred evidence against it.
Science is all about empirical evidence and logical evidence derived from that empircal evidence. And even then, it’s rare that anything in science is taken as absolute. Even the most hardened theories can be potentially disproven – which is why they are theories and not laws.
I searched your example and found a few sources with evidence to the contrary – including on a site stating it was for pagans! They said it was written around 1500 B.C. This link has information regarding several other sources that mention witches/sorcerers. Actually, I tried and failed to find your reference.
The Bible is indeed “a compilation of texts from a wide variety of sources,” but I (and many others) fail to find contradictions. The contradictions pointed out are found to be baseless when the original language is inspected. That said, I do understand that there are many mistranslations, which is part of why I own 5 different translations for reference. (Listed from most to least reliable: Young’s Literal Translation, King James Version, New KJV, New International Version, The Message. The Message is, I realize, typically not accurate. I only use it when I have a very, very hard time understanding the other versions or if I want another perspective.)
@ Pander
Thank you!
You may notice I avoided the word “science” in my first paragraph.And when I use it in the third, it is a reference to real science. I fully agree with your definition thereof. For faith, I understand it to be belief without evidence. Belief with evidence is useful, but for many, they have little use for evidence and only need something to believe in. You won’t convince a 4 year old (or high school dropout) of either creationism or evolutionism if the only thing you use is empirical evidence.
“There is no evidence that occurrence of radioactive isotopes was the same in the past as it is now, nor do we know that half-lives are always the exact same across time for every radioactive isotope.”
True we also have no proof that 1+1 always equaled 2 all through history but to assume otherwise is just adding unwarranted complexity. The assumption that the laws of physics are the laws of physics and always have been is a required assumption and it’s not an unreasonable one.
We do, however, have evidence that gravity has always worked in the past the way it does now and radioactive decay is much less complex than gravity,
And yet Ken Ham would have you believe that the length of a day arbitrarily changed in the past in order that the age of actual, living trees which are older than 6k years old can be explained away. Sorry, but planets don’t randomly speed up and slow down to support your insane belief system. He invokes the “But no one alive was there to refute this” argument, further compounding his insanity. Or desperation. Take your pick.
He has similar farcical arguments concerning the light we are receiving from distant objects which are measurably far, far older than 6k years old. Approximate quote” “Well, the speed of light might just be faster or slower out there in the universe, we just can’t know for certain, can we, because we don’t live there now do we?” The desperate attempt at rationalization literally oozes from him.
@Oberon:
If you’re talking about living trees, the trees may very well be over 6k years old. It says in the Bible how old Adam was when he died, but no one knows the start point of the counting. It may well have been after sin that the years started counting. Plants did not die before sin, but plants did not only start growing after sin.
If you’re talking about dead trees, see my example that radioactive isotopes, etc. may not have occurred at the same frequency as expected back then.
—
Light from distant objects: While it is stated in the Bible when objects were created, it is not stated when the light got here (though immediacy is implied). God knows the path the light would travel. It makes sense that he would create the light along the path when he created the objects. Otherwise, the stars created in Genesis 1:14-18 would not mark any seasons for quite some time, and it does not make sense that an omniscient and wise God would make something to help a world when the world would not receive the help for thousands or millions or more years, especially when life (plants) already exists on said world.
—
I never said I agree with everything Ken Ham says. I said I agree with a lot of it. Ken Ham is not God, and his word is not the Word of God. Also, you should note that there are quite a few people who write for AiG, so while I did not take the time to look up your quotes, they may not have all come from him.
I like how Clarence Darrow (or Henry Drummond as he was called in the play) put it in Inherit the Wind (the play based on the real life Scope’s Monkey Trial).
Drummond: It’s sad that we don’t all have your positive knowledge of what is right and wrong, Mr. Brady. How old do you think this rock is?
Brady: I am more interested in the “Rock of Ages” than I am in the age of rocks.
Drummond: Dr. Paige of Oberlin College tells me this rock is at least 10 million years old.
Brady: Well, well, Colonel Drummond, you managed to speak here some of that scientific testimony, after all.
Drummond: Look, Mr. Brady. These are the fossil remains of a marine prehistoric creature found in this very county, and which lived here millions of years ago when these very mountain ranges were submerged in water.
Brady: I know. The Bible gives a fine account of the flood. But your Professor’s a little mixed up in his dates. That rock is not more than six thousand years old.
Drummond: How do ya know?
Brady: A fine biblical scholar, Bishop Usher, has determined for us the exact date and hour of the Creation. It occurred in the year 4004 B.C.
Drummond: Well, that’s Bishop Usher’s opinion.
Brady: It’s not an opinion. It’s a literal fact — which the good Bishop arrived at through careful computation of the ages of the prophets, as set down in the Old Testament. In fact, he determined that the Lord began the Creation on the 23rd of October, 4004 B.C. at, uh, 9:00am.
Drummond: Is that Eastern Standard Time? Or Rocky Mountain Time? It wasn’t Daylight Saving Time, was it, because the Lord didn’t make the sun until the fourth day.
Brady: That is correct.
Drummond: That first day, what do you think, it was 24 hours long?
Brady: [The] Bible says it was a day.
Drummond: Well, there was no sun out. How do you know how long it was?
Brady: The Bible says it was a day!
Drummond: Well, was it a normal day, a literal day, 24 hour day?
Brady: I don’t know.
Drummond: What do you think?
Brady: I do not think about things that I do not think about.
Drummond: Do you ever think about things that you do thing about?! Isn’t it possible that it could have been 25 hours? There’s no way to measure it; no way to tell. Could it have been 25 hours?!
Brady: It’s possible.
Drummond: Then you interpret that the first day as recorded in the Book of Genesis could’ve been a day of indeterminate length.
Brady: I mean to state that it is not necessarily a 24 hour day.
Drummond: It could’ve been 30 hours, could’ve been a week, could’ve been a month, could’ve been a year, could’ve been a hundred years, or it could’ve been 10 million years!!
@Pander:
While it may not have appeared in the play, it is very precise in the original language of the text: it is a literal 24-hour day. As for the age of rocks, the Earth existed in Genesis 1:1. The first day did not happen until Genesis 1:3, so there is an indeterminate period in between the two times. Also, the exact day and hour is bogus. All we really know is the year of the start count for Adam’s age, which, as I stated above, may be either the sixth day or the day sin entered the world. So while the start count for Adam’s age is certainly in 4004 B.C., we don’t know exactly when that was relative to the age of the earth. All we know is there was no death before 4004 B.C.
For [high school] education’s sake: I think it would be best to teach on what has been proven thoroughly and that many people of different religions agree on in science class, alongside the scientific method. Teaching of evolution and creation belongs in a social sciences (history) class – which should be optional. For an example, the earth sciences class should involve teaching of recent, observable events such as the Mt. St. Helens eruption and active volcanoes in Hawaii, etc. The biology class should teach on cells, organs, organ systems, and animals in current and recorded history (recorded as in the last 500 years or so). The religion class should be the one discussing fossils and the age of rocks. Anything older than the printing press is probably not something that should be in a science classroom. Again, this is for high school. People can take whatever they want in college.
I honestly mean no offense, but the play ‘Inherit the Wind’ is based on the real life court case (State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes). This was used in the real life court case as well, and William Jennings Bryan (Brady in the play) was the foremost expert on the Bible of the time.
It makes sense to say that, by the Bible’s own rules, you cannot be sure it was a 24 hour day, if the sun was not created until the third day. A day is judged by the time it takes for the Earth to rotate once on its axis, with the sun being a fixed position compared to the Earth. If there is no sun, a day cannot be definitively judged to be any specific amount of hours. The original text did not say a 24 hour day. I’m not trying to diminish your beliefs at all – I’m just pointing out that this was a rather good argument to make about the malleability of the date of the Earth, since the standard argument by Creationists about stuff like carbon dating and fossils is that God created the Earth with the ‘appearance’ of age. Which is something that you can’t subject to experimentation. And like you just admitted, there is some period of time during Genesis that there is an indeterminate period of time.
Moreover, the Bible which is being used is the King James version (at least in the Scopes Trial, the standard translation of the Bible until the New English version and the New Revised Standard version). Most of what you said about Adam’s age is based on conjecture, not logical inference. Especially since, even since the creation of civilization, a year’s length has changed multiple times. And this is fine – for religion… but that shouldn’t be used to stop people from learning science. Again, I say this without meaning any offense and you have every right to believe what religious beliefs you want.
I have no problem with people believing in Creationism (regardless of my own disbelief in it as a dogma), but it’s not science because, like we agree, science is not based on faith or dogma – it’s based on empirical evidence and logical/mathematical inference from empirical evidence if empirical evidence isn’t available. Most importantly, science is about taking a hypothesis based on an observation, and subjecting it to experimentation in order to try to disprove it. You can’t do that with Creationism – it’s based on faith – its ‘rules’ are based on being outside the scope of experimentation, and so I’d have trouble using that as a basis to not teach proven scientific methodology like geology, physics, biology, astronomy, and other sciences which prove a far older age of the Earth and the universe. Evolution is not a ‘social science’ because it’s subjected to experimentation – some of which was actually made possible thanks to people like Mendel, himself a religious man, being a friar and all. So presenting it as ‘social science’ (which is more descriptive – but not easily experimental) rather than natural science (which is primarily experimental before you get to the descriptiveness) is wrong.
@Pander
https://answersingenesis.org/theory-of-evolution/millions-of-years/seven-reasons-why-we-should-not-accept-millions-of-years/
Read point number 1. This is not the only spot on the site for this, just the first one I found.
Did you read my thing on education? It’s not to stop people from learning science! I just think subjective observations should not be in a science classroom! Evolution theory and big bang theory belong in a history or religion classroom, not science. After all, evolution theory is based on the presupposition that there is no god, just as many religions have their own creation theories based on the presupposition that their gods exist.
You cannot separate the presupposition from the observation when attempting to find the age of an object older than yourself. We assume that trees chopped down are a certain age based on the rings inside the stump. It’s a good guess because we have seen many trees and can base it upon the knowledge obtained from trees that grew up and died within our lifetimes. We cannot do this with stars. We don’t know how old they are and any basis is from other stars that die while far older than ourselves. Any conjecture we use is starting from our presupposition, whatever it is.
Similarly, we can teach on gravity and half-lives because there are examples that are easily observable within our own lifetimes. Created elements that are radioactive clearly have half-lives that are very short. Discovering the half-life and what it is for something with a half-life of a few hours is easy. For gravity, we have examples of our solar system and Galileo’s experiments. As for geology, we have several active volcanoes and there are labs that can reproduce almost every other type of rock. In that case it’s not particularly hard to say how a certain rock was formed.
Basically, historical theories belong in a religion or history class, and observable science belongs in a science class.
Example question from the AP Biology sample test: “A fossil was discovered and determined to be millions of years old. How would you test for if it had plant life?” (May not be an exact quote.) The great part is, you don’t need the section that says “millions of years old” at all. You could replace it with “very old” and not lose meaning for the question. In fact, since it’s a fossil, it’s likely you don’t even need to know it’s old. The fact that it’s a fossil is probably enough information already.
@Lucario:
“Did you read my thing on education? It’s not to stop people from learning science! I just think subjective observations should not be in a science classroom!”
That’s the thing – it’s not a subjective observation – it’s an objective observation.
“Evolution theory and big bang theory belong in a history or religion classroom, not science.”
No, they both belong in a science class, because they’re not history. They’re taken from logical and mathematical inferences of empirical evidence. Evolution and the big Bang are not religion or based on faith. They’re based on math.
“After all, evolution theory is based on the presupposition that there is no god, just as many religions have their own creation theories based on the presupposition that their gods exist.”
No, evolution is based on natural selection and genetics – not on there being no god. Max Planck was a big proponent of the big bang theory, and in fact created physics standards like Planck Length, Planck Time, and the Planck Epoch – the point in time before the fundamental forces split (specifically before gravity split off from the other three, where physics literaly breaks down and is the shortest imaginable period of time after the big bang). And yet Max Planck was incredibly religious. He believed that God could exist in the Planck Epoch. But he did not take Creationism as a fact. Doesn’t it seem odd that therere are written records of civilizations existing BEFORE 4004BC? Some of the earliest examples of writing have been found and dated back to 3200BC in Sumer, which itself dates back its foundings of temple ruins to 5000BC in southern Mesopotamia. In 2003, tortoise shells were found in 24 Neolithic graves excavated at Jiahu, Henan province, northern China, with radiocarbon dates from the 7th millennium BC. Neolithic cave paintings are dated to well over 10,000 BC.
“You cannot separate the presupposition from the observation when attempting to find the age of an object older than yourself.”
Of course you can. Why would you think that I cannot observe that something existed longer than 27 years ago without presupposition? You just need something which is consistent as a backdrop. The longer you go back, the more you have to rely on math, chemistry, and physics, but they’re CONSISTENT. Historically, we use written records. Anthropologically, we use bones, ruins, writings, cuneiform, and carbon dating. Scientifically, we use math and physical laws (like the laws of thermodynamics) and half lives/carbon dating. We can use the red shift to view what happened millions of years ago with telescopes, since light takes a constant amount of time to travel to us from great distances (also not a supposition – it’s based on mathematical constants). Plus we’ve even been able to duplicate much of what happened in the early baryonic universe with the Cern super collider in order to even have direct empirical evidence.
“We cannot do this with stars. We don’t know how old they are and any basis is from other stars that die while far older than ourselves. Any conjecture we use is starting from our presupposition, whatever it is.”
Actually we do know how stars age, based on how fusion works with the creation of heavier elements (which is something we can duplicate in laboratories on Earth even). We’ve even seen star formations, supernovas, and in 2013, we saw actual evidence – empirical evidence via long distance telescopes – of a star dying.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/ist/?next=/smart-news/scientists-just-recorded-the-brightest-explosion-weve-ever-seen-53877529/
We also saw, in the same year, a star being born approximately 10,000 light years away, using the Atacama Large Array. There are pictures. Empirical evidence.
https://scitechdaily.com/astronomers-observe-the-birth-of-a-massive-star-in-the-milky-way/
“Example question from the AP Biology sample test: “A fossil was discovered and determined to be millions of years old. How would you test for if it had plant life?” (May not be an exact quote.) The great part is, you don’t need the section that says “millions of years old” at all. You could replace it with “very old” and not lose meaning for the question.”
Actually, that would massively change the question, since ‘very old’ is not an accurate amount at all. The difference between ‘thousands’ and ‘millions’ is significant. If you build a house, would you tell the architect that you want the walls in one room ‘pretty big’ but you want the walls in another room, much bigger? No… you’d give numbers. When you buy a computer, do you say ‘I want a really fast one’ or do you look at the requirements you need to use a computer for, then get a computer that meets or exceeds those requirements?
“The fact that it’s a fossil is probably enough information already.”
You can never have too much information. The more factual information you have about the world, rather than anecdotal information, the more you can affect the real world.
@Pander
I’d just be repeating myself for most things, so I’ll skip it.
Regarding the test question: Your reply had nothing to do with the expected answer for the question. The question was looking for what things last a very long time and would not have decayed. Most everything that would decay would be gone in the first thousand years, if not in the first hundred or so. Millions of years is not important to the question.
It’s true that for architecture and computer specs you want more definite numbers. But when regarding the age of a fossil, the number of years it has been there tends to be much less important, especially past the first thousand.
I’m not asking you to drop your beliefs. I’m certainly not dropping mine. But I do ask you not to force others to learn a belief system in a science class.
Oh, in no way was I telling you to drop your beliefs. To each their own. I was just giving reasons why we shouldn’t stop teaching evolution in school as science.
The thing is, however, evolution is not a ‘belief system’ as you’re calling it. It’s a scientific theory based on logical inference and empirical evidence, which was come to from rigorous experimentation of the initial hypothesis. So yes, it should be taught in school as science. Since it is science. Evolution isnt something which you need to ‘have faith in.’ It just applies the scientific method.
I wouldnt tell you to drop your beliefs. I just would ask that you don’t try to change the definition of what is science by saying it shouldn’t be taught in schools. One might as well say that one shouldnt teach geology or chemistry then.
I wouldn’t class believing in something without evidence as “blind faith”. I’d reserve that for believing in something in spite of evidence. Such as your example of young-earth creationists. (Young-earth creationism, interestingly, maintains that God is this being of ultimate truth – who created this hugely elaborate and self-consistent lie.)
I love your definition of “blind (blond?) faith” as believing in something in spite of evidence (to the contrary).
I’d argue but I know nothing I say will convince you. I’ll just leave this here for other readers. https://answersingenesis.org/age-of-the-earth/
Your definition of “blind faith” is good, though. It carries the connotation of “NYAH NYAH I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!” which is absolutely something to avoid.
Yup, completely agree: to me, blind faith is holding to your belief even when giving evidence (or proof) contrary or counter to your beliefs
Im not trying to say that religion has a say in science, they are completely different things. I am saying that a scientist and a religious person both have a belief in something. The difference being that the religious person’s belief can not be tested while the scientist’s belief is just a hypothesis and can be tested. Religion and science are two different things, all I meant was the religious and non-religious can sit down in peace with having to fight about who is right. That is all. Now lets get along and have a drink. On me.
Thank you!
You can read my argument above, but I also want to point out that I am an engineering student. One has little bearing on the other. I have plenty of non-religious friends on my robotics team, just as I have plenty of religious friends at church (many of whom are studying sciences). My Christianity has no impact on my design of the robot.
As for your offer of a drink, I’ll have a soda.
Here ya go. Cheers! -Sip-
The thing that amazes me about religious arguments is that the religious still think they HAVE an argument. Given that points of religion have been argued for thousands of years, I can assure you that whatever argument you want to make in defense of your religion it’s already been met and counter by smarter men than us.
Case in point: “the religious person’s belief can not be tested”
I’ll let Carl Sagan answer this one; https://www.users.qwest.net/~jcosta3/article_dragon.htm
I partially agree on your second point. (“I can assure you that whatever argument you want to make in defense of your religion it’s already been met and counter by smarter men than us.”) I direct you to C.S. Lewis.
I am, most certainly, no scholar on religion. I am not making many of my own arguments, but simply restating or referencing other prior arguments. I realize, however, that there are many people that have not heard or read such arguments, and there are many I have yet to read myself – nobody has enough time to read all that has been written, and many things are not recorded. I simply ask that people occasionally read some of what I reference, especially if they will reply to my comment.
—
On that note, I did read the linked article. I understand the metaphor, and it is quite good. I have heard similar things from within church, by the way. “So that neither he who is planting anything, nor he who is watering, but he who is giving growth–God.” (1 Corinthians 3:7, YLT) Restated, it’s not who presents the argument or what is argued that can help someone believe, it’s God. But “How then shall they call upon [him] in whom they did not believe? and how shall they believe [on him] of whom they did not hear? and how shall they hear apart from one preaching?” (Romans 10:14, YLT) As such, I argue only that others may have a chance to reconsider their views.
For ai_vin specifically: I agree that it is difficult to find evidences outside of religion for miracles. But there are many occurrences doctors cannot explain and there is a reason that some (non-religious) doctors will still say to pray for a miracle when they see no chance otherwise. If it was completely unheard of, no doctor would ever tell someone to pray for a healing that had never, ever happened.
Science is not belief. Science is not a thing. Science is not a collection of dry facts, nor is it a bunch of equations. Science is not packaged in neat textbooks with colour pictures and it isn’t a framework of ideas about how to describe the universe.
Science is a process of testing ideas and concepts. Science is a methodology of evaluating data, of discovering what data is needed to decide on the worth of something, and for developing means of getting that data. Science does not care about big bangs, about continents moving around, and about whether octopi evolved or were given their eyes. Science is about how we find out, not about what we find out. Any sufficiently advanced magic is just as susceptible to Science as our current technology, because it involves repeated, independent observations that do not depend on the observer.
Science cannot be currently used to determine the existence or non-existence of God(s), because the tools to develop the required data does not exist. Science is not a belief, because it is a method for testing beliefs. Science is about understanding, and is independent of what the understanding is about.
+1
Also, Mythbusters.
And.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RECuQaaGGfA
“The key difference between atheists and the religious is the ability to actually accept new facts”
WRONG, atheists have just as much dogma as the different religions. It’s just in the opposite direction. It’s the agnostic that have an open mind, they haven’t made any decision about religion (or lack there of). To expand on your comment about the appearance of God, if God came down and said EVERY religion was wrong, and we needed to change, then most people, in most religions, as well as the atheists would disbelieve him, and continue to believe as they did before. The agnostic would be MORE likely to say “WOW, o.k.” (even people without firm convictions can sometimes cling to their lack as much as people with strong convictions).
You are mistaken in your definitions. An atheist does not have a dogma regarding the nonexistence of the many deities mankind has invented, the atheist simply does not believe something for which there is no evidence.
Dogma: a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true.
There is no dogma in atheism, no authority tells me that none of the deities invented by man exist, I believe that simply because I see no evidence that these myths are in any way true. Thor isn’t rolling around in the clouds causing that noise we call thunder, and Christ didn’t rise from the dead or turn water into wine any more than Dionysus, another deity closely associated with wine, rose from the dead.
If some deity did decide to manifest, I as an atheist would accept the existence of that deity, because now that existence would have the evidence which was previously lacking in order to support that acceptance. And so would every other atheist. I would quite frankly absolutely love to see that happen, if only for the utter amusement I would derive from watching the believers in one or another religions which have just been proven wrong squirm. It would be hilarious! Every single religious person is utterly convinced that if such an event took place theirs would be the religion which was proven to be correct, and since that can’t possibly be true for all of them, and might possibly be true for none of them, the results would be quite amusing to observe.
But I would believe in the newly revealed deity, because there would now be evidence for such a belief, while before there was none. It is only the religious persons who would cling to their disproved faiths, because they have been trained to reject evidence and to rely upon their faith for their world view.
I think anyone can have dogma – atheist or religious-minded. Although I think you meant that atheism itself is not about dogma, rather than atheists cannot be dogmatic. In which case I agree :) Dogma just means a set of rules which people are supposed to follow as an absolute truth. Atheists do not always mean scientists.
I mean… look at Atheism Plus – most of them are anything but scientific in their belief structure and seem very dogmatic in their approaches – to the point where they slam noted atheist writers who DO have a scientific background like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris (who are both biologists).
Or look at atheists like Joseph Stalin or Che Guevara – they were blindly dogmatic and atheists (although I’m not saying being atheists made them fascists – they were fascists because of their blind obedience to marxism, not atheism). Their dogma just happened to be nationalism (in the form of marxism).
People involved in Atheism Plus slam Dawkins and Harris for things that have nothing to do with their scientific expertise, notably the fact that they are colossal jerks. Harris also likes to pontificate about things he is not an expert in, like airport security. He’s been taken apart by people who are experts in the subject, e.g. Bruce Schneier.
And you know what that is called? Science! Harris can be taken apart by an expert in the subject such as Schneier, who is indeed an expert. That takes away from anything Harris might have said which was refuted by Schneier. It does not mean that anything Harris says is equally incorrect, regardless of his credentials or lack thereof.
Sam Harris utterly destroys that complete tool Reza Aslan in religious debates. Aslan claims to have about 4 different doctorates (the numbers change depending on which case of him trotting out his credentials you watch) in various fields, but in reality has only one. When a person feels the need to lie about their credentials like that, especially on a subject which is so easily fact checked, it shows their complete insecurity. Azlan teaches creative writing, not religion, and that fact is most amusing to me since the defense of religion requires some very creative writing and speaking.
Sam Harris also utterly destroys Deepak Chopra in debates on religion. Chopra likes to mix his religion with metaphysics, and since Harris is a neuroscientist he has a much deeper grounding in science than Chopra, and his constant calling out of Chopra’s new age bullshit as “woo-woo” is hilarious.
As far as being colossal jerks goes, I welcome it. I shudder to think of what our classrooms would look like if there were not people like them constantly struggling to keep science and religion separate, and who are not afraid to call a spade a spade. The people who are trying to get creationism taught next to actual science as an equal ‘possibility’ are the people who are the colossal jerks. Those ignoramuses would have our children wasting their time on trivially refuted theories which spring from religion and have no basis in science as if they were ‘just another theory.’ NO, no, a million times NO. Religion indoctrinates far too many people already who actually have a science education and should know better. We must protect young minds from this vicious poison before they grow up believing that the Earth is only ~6,000 years old and that some magical man in the sky who created the universe actually wants to have a personal relationship with them.
I haven’t noticed Harris getting slammed by atheism plus advocates for criticizing religious beliefs. I have noticed him getting slammed for advocating violence against Muslims, and racist idiocy like his profiling ideas.
Actually, Harris has very liberal policies (Sam Harris) although he’s very blunt about his beliefs (and Dawkins is even moreso blunt). Being blunt doesn’t mean he’s wrong though. I’d get into a defense of Harris’s speeches, but I disagree with some and agree with others, and he has like… hundreds of speeches and they’re mostly freely available on Youtube and he tends to take a very fact-based view on his opinions of religion. But I’m mainly wanting to mention Atheism Plus – because of the issue of dogma.
First, Harris doesn’t get slammed by atheism plus because he criticizes religious beliefs – he gets slammed because he goes against the social justice construct that makes up their dogma. Not to mention…. critiquing religious beliefs IS what atheists do, even if only by not adhering to religious beliefs in the first place. And they have never said anything against his critiques of Christianity – just Islam – as a ‘protected group’ in social justice circles. Also, he never advocated violence against muslims – most of his speeches about the subject simply say that people should not ‘grade muslims on a curve.’
The quote, in ‘The End of Faith’ by Sam Harris was based on a hypothetical where an islamist regime possessed nuclear weapons. What he said was that you can’t hae a Cold War with an islamist state, since a Cold War requires both sides to not want mutually assured destruction. Since, in Islam (at least in how it’s practiced in islamist regimes, they WANT to bring about the death of their enemies and are not dissuaded by their own destruction because of the concept of martyrdom, if an islamist regime got nuclear weapons, they would use them. The specific quote is “What would we do if an islamist regime, which goes dewey-eyed at the mere mention of Paradise, ever acquires long range nuclear weaponry? If history is any guide,we will not be sure where the warheads are or what their state of readiness would be, so we will not be able to rely on targeting with conventional weapons to destroy them. In such an unthinkable situation, the only thing likely to ensure our survival MAY be a nuclear first strike.”
So he doesnt advocate violence against muslims. At all. It’s a lie to say that. He took a hypothetical situation, in which a radical islamist regime acquired nuclear weapons, and stated that cold war tactics would not work on them as they did with the Soviet Union, since the M.A.D. was a tactic that COULD be used against a secular regime which did not have a core philosophy of martyrdom. And even then, he said ‘our only option to survive would be the unthinkable crime of a nuclear first strike. He calls it an unthinkable crime, but is being logical in saying it’s a possible outcome in order to survive, regardless of the moral cost involved. He’s a scientist. He bases his opinions on likely scenarios and factual responses based on historical context. He obviously has never advocated, for example, nuking Pakistan – a currently nuclear-armed muslim country. Because the government is not radical islamist. His entire point is to figure ways to avoid having to be in that ‘unthinkable situation.’
Second, Atheism Plus doesnt use skepticism. They don’t use the marketplace of the free exchange of ideas and debate – they use safe spaces, actual violence, lawsuits, and shouting down people with volume rather than facts if you go against whatever their current, inconsistent views happen to be that day. In a lot of ways, they’re like Scientology, but with a social justice warrior bent to it instead of aliens and L Ron Hubbard
Third, and most importantly, Atheism Plus seems to think that ‘to be an atheist, you must follow a specific laundry list of political and social ideas.’ Many (most) of which have nothing to do with the existence or non-existence of a deity or deities, or the dogma that surrounds those religious beliefs (and that’s generally where Harris points blame for religion – the dogma being more dangerous than the religion itself).
Atheism Plus has so many rules about what you must believe in order to be an atheist – which is about as dogmatic as any hard-core religious zealot.. They’re unwilling and unable to actually articulate any points they may claim to have without resorting to an ad hominem attack on the person’s personality, rather than the point they are making, and have done stuff like making DMCA attacks on atheist bloggers, creating false death threats against themselves (which are then discovered), threatening to bring in police when hearing or seeing contradictory ideas under the belief that it invades the safe space against their rules, and outright violence. That’s dogmatic blind faith., which is why I used it as an example.
There’s no such thing as organised atheism, so how could an atheist have a set dogma?
As for your second point: I’d accept the existence of someone who I can see yes. I still wouldn’t worship the guy/girl/thing, unless he also provides a tangible reason for that, but still
I think some people might look at groups like Atheism Plus and assume that’s ‘organised atheism’ – even though they are more like a cult than actually atheists.
I’m not familiar with this group. Are they tax free in the US?
They are pretty much self-destructing right now thanks to a lot of insanity within the group.
They’re sort of the Westboro Baptist Church or wahabi sect of ‘atheism’ (not that atheism is an actual ‘group’ to begin with – it’s the absence of any group) – preferring safe spaces to the marketplace of ideas and reasoned discussion about skepticism of religion. Usually they don’t acutally discuss religion (or skepticism of it) at all, to be honest.
No, they’re not a religious organization, and therefore are not tax free.
I’m not sure that Atheism Plus is really much of an organized group at all. That said, if you really want to understand it, you should really read what its proponents have to say for themselves. You can start here. Then explore the Skepchick website. Here’s PZ Myer’s take on the subject. And it looks to me like Pharyngula is putting in quite a lot of time on skepticism of religion.
Well, they try to be an organized group. They do a lot of excluding of people if you don’t believe in every one of the laundry list of their social and political ideas, for example. They have a group logo.
My problem with it is that, when you get down to it, atheism only addresses one question – is belief in a deity/deities supported by evidence? Atheism does not, and never has been does not provide a world view about how to live nor should it. Atheism doesnt tell you whether you should believe that transexualism is good or bad, it doesnt tell you whether global warming is occurring, it doesn’t tell you anything about the wage gap and whether or not it exists or what to do about it, it doesn’t promote or condemn abortion or other hot-button political triggers, it doesnt tell you anything about wearing leather or fur, etc. It doesnt tell you whether to vote Democrat, Republican, Socialist, Communist, Conservative, Green Party, etc. All it is about is whether or not the belief in god is supported by empirical evidence, and atheism is the belief that it is not, and therefore they do not need to believe in God. That’s pretty much it. Adding the rest is adding dogma in the form of a set of rules you must follow in order to be considered a real atheist.
Atheism Plus tries to put a bunch of different groups into one, under the banner of atheism, as if atheists are of a group mindthink on all things beyond the question of belief in a deity.
Even if Mohammad was The Last
StarfighterProfitProphet, does not rule out Jesus being The Son of GodMohammad showed up several centuries later (can’t remember if it was the within the first thousand years, or early second thousand), and look how much shit happened since Year 0! Even a lot of the Christian leaders were getting things wrong
It’s possible that Mohammad was The Last Prophet because God decided “Going to give these idiots one last chance, after this, they are on their own!!” because, well, Jesus wasn’t the first
Crap!! Looks like broke the second ‘strike’ tag after ‘Profit’ :(
This thing really needs a preview or edit function!
I gotcha. I haven’t been able to find a plugin that allows editing that isn’t a comprehensive replacement for the comments as a whole. You can understand why I’d be nervous about swapping out comment platforms and risk the existing comments.
Is there no way to implement a new system which will only apply to the comments on a ‘going forward’ basis, rather than applying to all of the comments, past, present, and future?
Understand the limitations (would far rather keep this comment system than switch to Disquis, Personal Opinion Only), was just reiterating what others have said in the past :D
Oberon: don’t believe so, for one thing, it would more than likely put an end to people adding to previous comment pages (it would be silly, and highly cumbersome, to maintain two separate comment systems within the same comic pages), “By The Book” has two different comment systems, but that’s because the creator has two separate sites hosting the same comic
Good point, but for a logic issue.
Yeshuah made a comment that you don’t put new wine in old wineskins. Essentially, Yeshuah was here to show a “new” way of dealing with each other, based on compassion and understanding. This also involves a superseding of the old covenant with the new covenant (which to me brings up an interesting question of the place of the Old Testament in the Christian faith – as a Christian, is The Old Testament something to be adhered to or is it just historical perspective?)
Both Judaism and Islam have their roots in conquering their neighbors. Abraham’s vision culminated in the Hebrews conquering the various peoples around Canaan, and much of Mohammed’s works involved conquering folks. Both have a strong streak of “God is on my side and therefore we win, so because we win this proves what we are doing is right.” Yeshuah’s most violent documented act is overturning some tables of the steps of the temple.
As faith systems advance, they (more often than not) begin to reject the use of coercive force as a means of propagating the faith.
If Yeshuah is the Son of God, and presumably therefore truthful, why would God’s last prophet be using methods the Son of God has said are not the new way that God has set out? I suppose it’s possible that God changed his mind, but that seems… whimsical.
If Yeshuah was only a prophet, then it Mohammed can be the Last Prophet and no explicit contradiction is inherent.
The ten commandments of the Hebrew tradition as given by God are fully subsumed (and expanded on, in one sense) by Yeshuah’s two commandments – but Yeshuah’s are significantly more vague and require significantly more reflection to fulfill. It is in the nature of humans to focus on “right action” rather than “right thought” because, frankly, it’s much easier to do a thing than to change one’s attitudes. “It’s easier to act your way to a feeling than to feel your way to an action.” as a friend of mine once said.
The problem of human faith is it is human. Once people get involved, all sorts of distortions take place from the original message. Self-justification, arrogance, lack of compassion and other issues of elevation of the self at the expense of others are the flaws in humanity that faith is intended to address. But people are screwed up, and none of us is really a good representative of the values we espouse (although I do admit that some do much better than others).
All faith systems have at least some positive qualities and all faith systems have some negative qualities. Christianity has been sullied by believers not living up to their beliefs or distorting the message to justify their actions, but if Yeshuah was who he claimed to be, he said quite clearly that being screwed up and acknowledging that we are screwed up is part of being his follower. Believers who understand the message he gave acknowledge that they deserve punishment, not grace. And yet, more often than not, grace is what we get. The universe is awfully kind to are little blue planet (or at least, statistically generous).
As I understand it, that same grace is foundational in Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and many other faith systems that are more than “The gods will punish you if you step out of line”. Knowing one’s place in the universe, seeking understanding Truth, and acknowledging one’s flaws and working to correct them are also foundational.
Which brings us back to Carl’s wonderful speech above. :D
You seem to have a great amount of understanding. Your comment was very refreshing.
To answer your question, (“As a Christian, is The Old Testament something to be adhered to or is it just historical perspective?”) it depends on what exactly you’re talking about. With what I get from church and Bible study, the laws are of three types: civil, ceremonial and moral. The first two no longer apply because we are under the New Covenant, but moral laws are based on the character of God and still apply. Easiest way: all 10 commandments except #4 still apply, and most other laws do not apply. For non-law stuff, it is still beneficial to read; for laws that no longer apply, it is beneficial to understand the reasoning behind it.
A reminder that this is a summary from an engineering student. There are plenty of people who can give a more in-depth explanation.
This. So much this.
@Yngvar
Actually, my extremely clear undestanding is that Dr Sagan wrote a serious article some time in the 1960s, in which he suggested that the Earth COULD have been visited by aliens in the distant past. As far as I know, he never actually recanted that particular item either.
…. Then, just a few years later, a shyster called Eric Von Daniken came along and made such a mess of that entire line of speculation that no serious scientist will go anywhere near it now.
I was sucked in at the time, I admit it, but now ….
Let me be clear. I believe our ancient ancestors were, as a rule, far smarter than we give credit for, even now. So “explaining” the rise of ancient cultures as “aliens done it” is shortsighted and unneccessary and insulting to our distant kinfolk.. There is no proof of alien civilizations having visited Earth.
On the other hand, speculatiuon about this particualr subject is more or less automatically pigeon-holed as “lunatic fringe”, and seems to be taboo for anyone else, least of all via serious study. That mindset kind of bothers me as well.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/a8/64/8b/a8648b11aeea3a240d1463ea7cf2fc4e.jpg
I love how expressive Deuce is…Think I am going to practice the smile in panel 3.
I think you confused Bigalow with X Machina :)
Aaaand hope that there’s intelligent life,
somewheres out in space,
‘cos there’s buggerall…
down here on Earth.
Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in this universe is that none of it has tried to contact us…
Pfft, they’re just nervous about making a good impression on us since we’re so awesome.
+1
I was always fond of Don Henley’s “They’re not here, they’re not coming”. No self-respecting race should come visit until we get our act together. Looks like in this universe that’s not true.
This idea that ET’s haven’t visited us because we’re somehow ‘unworthy’, is rooted in the idea that aliens are God-analogues, beings who have transcended their faults and risen to a new level of being. Which is bull. Space is not another level of being, people, it’s another part of the same level. Aliens may be more advanced than us, may have managed to get into space without destroying themselves, but they’re no more ‘perfect’ than we are. They would come to Earth for the same reason we explore: curiosity, and the desire to find things that they need. If we have what they need, they’ll make contact, convince us to give it to them (or crack skulls until we do), maybe try to ‘educate’ us. I doubt they’d avoid us because we were ‘unworthy’ – have Europeans refused to create settlements on any terrestrial landmass because the natives ‘weren’t civilized enough’?? I highly doubt our idiocy would prevent aliens from visiting us.
Aliens have probably seen Independence Day and Stargate and don’t want to mess with us. They were probably thinking ‘we’re going to take over those earthling chumps’ then saw those movies and thought ‘oh crap – did you see what they did to the other races that messed with them?’ And that’s why they haven’t visited yet.
After all, I hardly think Will Smith or Kurt Russell would lie to us.
I actually rather liked that concept in one of the tangent Animorphs novels, the Ellimist Chronicles. A race of perfectly peaceful beings gets slaughtered with no apparent provocation… except their most popular game was a highly sophisticated version of Civilization. And the attackers saw it, didn’t understand it wasn’t real, and came to the logical conclusion that these monsters were playing god with entire worlds just for amusement, who must be stopped at all costs and are utterly undeserving of mercy.
Say what you will about the series in general, some of the concepts were surprisingly creative.
I think that was an episode of Stargate Atlantis also.
So, those movies have actually travelled backwards through time? That’s the only explanation for why aliens didn’t visit us 5000 years ago
They had a lot of things to do in the past 5000 years. Dishes, laundry, working their office jobs, etc. Aliens like to procastinate just like anyone.
When they finally got around to wanting to invade us, they saw the movies and said ‘Woah! Woah! …. maybe we shouldn’t. These people are badass.”
More likely they haven’t visited us because when they did their initial scans from home, all they saw was primordial soup; possibly dinosaurs
They did do some on-site testing of the planet back in the day. About 65 million years ago one of them had an idea “I wonder what happens if we drop a really big rock on it?”
Aliens haven’t visited us for a number of very practical reasons:
1) They would have to have evolved a space-going civilization within the lifetime of our own species, and that time frame is just an eye-blink compared to the age of the universe (Creationist theories notwithstanding);
2) They would have to be markedly different from us (biologically, scientifically, or both) in one or more of a number of ways.
– Able to live incredibly long lives;
– Able to consume scant or no resources for incredible periods of time, via hibernation, simple nature, or some kind of ‘deep sleep’ or cryogenics;
– Able to breed generations and not lose their cultural knowledge so that the mission purpose is remembered;
– Able to withstand the environment of space, low gravity (provided only by constant thrust), no gravity (during periods of coasting without thrust), shipboard confinement, etc.;
– etc.
3) Not have the resources they need within easier reach than our solar system;
4) Have the political and social wherewithal to invest extravagantly in enormously long term exploration for the purpose of exploration and not simple profit;
5) Have at their disposal the enormous energies required to accelerate large masses to the speeds which would make interstellar travel relevant over time (see also point 2);
As much as I love speculative science fiction, I just can’t imagine a species which could manage to make the trip, or their purpose in doing so, or the massive coincidence required that they actually exist within the same lifespan as our own species.
Assuming “they” were limited by technology in the same way we are. Today faster than light travel is pure science fiction as is any theories that suggest a “work around” such as folding space or similar ideas. Go back in human history just 200 years and the idea of a telephone was science fiction, never mind cell phones. The great innovation that was described in “20 000 leagues under the sea” (in 1870) was simple electricity and ways to produce and store it. There is no telling what innovations tomorrow will bring. “New” sciences are being added all the time while “old” sciences are expanded every day.
Any culture, anywhere could have technology FAR more advanced than us and therefore have abilities commonplace we could not even name.
The telephone might have been science fiction, but physics did not rule it out. Physics does rule out faster than light travel. It also makes even large fractions of the speed of light, the speeds necessary to shrink a 10 light year trip from a few hundred years to perhaps a mere 20 years or so, highly impractical. And that’s just 10 light years. The galaxy is a huge place, and 10 light years is a very short distance when looked at in context. Further reasons why aliens will never visit us.
Yeah, sure, there are some interesting pet theories within the quantum physics gang about using wormholes for FTL travel, but they require that enormous energies be used to hold open the wormhole, and the amount of energy needed is completely speculative and could well be either more than that which is needed to accelerate large masses (starships) within ordinary space, or simply an amount which can never be generated. And also they break causality, by allowing according to the same theories for an object to arrive at its destination at a point actually earlier in time, not just a simultaneous trip or a trip of just a few microseconds. For those reasons I discount the theories as being anything more than just fooling around with freaky math that will never yield a practical application.
200 hundreds ago, physics said that manned flight was impossible, then some guy in Canterbury built a plane and flew
Right, Like I was trying to say but maybe got it a bit muddled, it isn’t PHYSICS that is flawed, only our understanding or comprehension of it.
Also our level of technology affects how much we are able to learn. For example the field of particle physics has been expanded considerably in the past 10 years but mostly because we have the technology and understanding needed to build a super collider and test theories, technology that simply wasn’t available to anyone 200 years ago.
Thank you for making me aware of that photo and that video.
That is not “too much faith in humanity”, that is having too much faith in POSTERS.
The kitten hanging from a tree saying Hang in there is my lord and savior.
And the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster was happy to produce it.
That kitty saved my life, man! I had to leave him behind, the guilt is killin me, but I’ll always remember that he said hang in there
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/b1/a9/8f/b1a98f1e5ef141fd9f47482f4eebf8c8.jpg
A better way to keep a secret is to not know it.
In capture the flag last week, the flag was a plunger and had to be placed in such a way that it could be obtained by running in any direction. Three people on my team of twenty knew where it was and told no one. They also did not guard the flag at all. After people spent more than an hour searching for it, including people on the same team, the game finally ended. When those three returned, we asked them to retrieve the flag; it was hidden in a flowerbed of daffodils that were nearly the same height as the handle, which was white topped with a green rubber grip.
Despite many people searching the same area, no one recognized it as the flag but as just another daffodil.
I tend to forget that Sydney’s last name is Scoville, so every time it comes up it reminds me of her love for spicy food and I crack up all over again.
Um… this might be my favorite page yet. REALLY nice, DaveB.
In one of CJ Cherryh’s novels, “Hellburner” I think, one of her characters from the asteroid belt muses about the fuss over intelligent life, considering all the smart critters on the home world. His fascination with ducks, dogs, and such made a strong impression on me. Talk to aliens? Sure. Talk to whales? Meh.
Humans are weird.
Thank you, Dave. : )
I suppose that Maxima and Sydney are heading back to the base???
Upon arrival,Maxima looks at her watch..
Maxima:Sydney,you’d better go and report to Arianna for that course she wants you to take that somehow gets being put off…
Sydney(wide eyes):That’s right! Sooner or later I’ll have to be prepped for the media!!! (Runs from Maxima),ONE SIDE! I’M IN A HURRY!!! (Sounds of garbage cans being tipped over are heard as Maxima cringes…!)
I like the Animaniacs take on panel one.
Everybody lives on a street in a city
Or a village or a town for what it’s worth.
And they’re all inside a country which is part of a continent
That sits upon a planet known as Earth.
And the Earth is a ball full of oceans and some mountains
Which is out there spinning silently in space.
And living on that Earth are the plants and the animals
And also the entire human race.
It’s a great big universe
And we’re all really puny.
We’re just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
It’s big and black and inky
And we are small and dinky
It’s a big universe and we’re not.
And we’re part of a vast interplanetary system
Stretching seven hundred billion miles long.
With nine planets and a sun; we think the Earth’s the only one
That has life on it, although we could be wrong.
Across the interstellar voids are a billion asteroids
Including meteors and Halley’s Comet too.
And there’s over fifty moons floating out there like balloons
In a panoramic trillion-mile view.
And still it’s all a speck amid a hundred billion stars
In a galaxy we call the Milky Way.
It’s sixty thousand trillion miles from one end to the other
And still that’s just a fraction of the way.
‘Cause there’s a hundred billion galaxies that stretch across the sky
Filled with constellations, planets, moons and stars.
And still the universe extends to a place that never ends
Which is maybe just inside a little jar!
Yakko, Wakko and Dot:
It’s a great big universe
And we’re all really puny,
We’re just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
Though we don’t know how it got here
We’re an important part here
It’s a big universe and it’s ours!
Got a link?
Here you go :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_J5rBxeTIk
Whenever life gets you down, Mrs.Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you’ve had quite enough
Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the ‘milky way’
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick
But out by us, it’s just three thousand light years wide
We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
We go ’round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that’s the fastest speed there is
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buqtdpuZxvk
My choice for song is better because mine mentions Mickey Rooney.
Yours comes close since it uses the word whizz, but Mickey Rooney, man. Cmon. You know I win with that.
But Stephen Hawking did this version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfcC6FYyL4U
Okay… that one’s really good too :)
Sydney needs to be sticking a post it note on the wall saying “You are here”.
According to Douglas Adams and the Total Perspective Vortex Machine…. this would be a very bad idea unless you want their brains to become tapioca pudding.
Mainly because:
“Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long walk down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.”
I guess the correct response would have been “You believe in space aliens?” but in Syd’s place I would be remiss if I didn’t say “It’s just not worth colonizing another planet unless you can subjugate at least one civilization, you mean?”
No, that’s something Maxi would say
I feel like anyone would say that to someone who talks about owning the universe “because there are other planets with life on them”.
Yeah, but what you said is more typically by someone who knows that other person, as is at leas on generally friendly terms, in this case, someone like Maxi
I have no problem being on unfriendly terms with someone who talks about owning the universe, but maybe it’s just me.
If I had been asked to respond to that, and I had some time to think out a cover story beforehand, I would go with something like:
“Well yeah, there are like umpteen billion planets out there, and a few of them might have something on them. But the odds are that that whatever is there is probably nothing more than just some pond scum or bacteria or whatever.”
And then, act as if he is telling you something new.
“Wait, are you hinting at something? Your company makes stuff for Archon, so have they told you something I don’t know? Like there are REAL aliens with spaceships and everything?”
And then go into Sydney mode.
“OOH! Please tell me we have giant space lasers to shoot down invading alien armadas. That would be so cool. They are always after our water.”
And then geek mode.
“Hmm, and if we did have space lasers we could also use them to shoot incoming asteroids before they hit us.”
And then act like he did you a favor.
“Hey thanks for the info. I have a few questions to ask when I get back to headquarters. I hate being the new guy on the team. They never tell me anything.”
Who else actually read that in the voice of Carl Sagan?
I did. I hear everything in his voice. It’s a serious medical condition.
Saganistic Paracusia is the number one cause of coolness today.
And then there’s Freemanic Paracusia.
But that’s still not as cool as Beeblebroxian Paracusia.
Titty sprinkles.
I read it in the voice of Gilbert Gottfried unfortunately.
As far as I’m concerned, that passage by Sagan is the most important thing anyone has ever written.
[a href=”https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f_J5rBxeTIk”]I always hear this when I read that.[/a]
Yeah, I’m strange.
Grrrr…I did it wrong…
Anyway, I always hear this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f_J5rBxeTIk
When I read that. Keeps that pesky dehydration away…
Shoulda posted this as a reply to the lyrics posted above :p
This is actually a very inspirational piece. Although it reminds me of one of my favorite Warhammer 40,000 thoughts for the day:
“The universe is a big place and whatever happens you will not be missed.”
The proper reaction to that is “Really?! I would love to know more about that.” The secret is still deniable and you start fishing for what he knows…
Harem told Deus about the “true sight” orb. Then Deus fished for information from Sydney. Which is a pretty good reason for the readers to believe that Deus knows that a bunch of aliens are running around with illusory disguises. Furthermore, Deus did the fishing in front of Maxima instead of arranging for it to happen when Sydney and Maxima were separated. Even if he is trolling Maxima, he is letting her know he knows something. A suspicious person would start making all sorts of connections from that.
‘Suspicious people’ don’t need things like that to start making ‘connections’
You don’t believe someone like Deus doesn’t already have a member from a space-faring race already on his pay-roll?
I guess I should have made that clearer. Maxima is already suspicious of Deus about a number of other things, so she will already be inclined to analyze anything he says carefully.
Secret 1:
If she doesn’t think Deus is already in on the aliens on Earth secret, he basically admitted it.
Secret 2:
Why exactly would he be mentioning it to Sydney? Why would she be more likely to know that than an ordinary super since her super senses are supposed to be classified? Unless the classified information is already blown… So if Maxima is really paranoid she might recognize that the likelihood of Deus making the statement about aliens is higher if he knows Sydney’s classified power, which suggests spying or a mole. So he might have given more away than intended. He might be deliberately outing his information back door or he might just be committing the mastermind mistake of thinking the heroes won’t figure out his taunting information until too late.
When it is all boiled down there is one thing in comics/animation that supersedes all logic or even the laws of physics: “The Rule of Funny”. The punchline trumps all.
One rule to rule them all, one rule to find them.
One rule to bring them all, and in the darkness have them slip on a banana peel.
Anyone else reminded of Pratchett’s “The Last Hero”? Can’t say a huge amount because of spoilers, but there’s a similar sentiment there.
Not sure what nebula that was in the Sagan video around the 4:30 mark, but, to me, that looks like a mother holding her child (and if that is the view from the other side, wonder what it looks like from this side…)
Not the other side, same side. Voyager has traveled farther and faster than anything else we have ever created and is barely out of the solar system (and there is some argument about that). It isn’t on the other side of anything but the outer planets (assuming they are on the right part of their orbits).
Space is REALLY big.
Unless that was filmed in a circle, you were looking back towards Earth form the other side of that Nebula (didn’t see that camera pan around to look forward, but maintained it’s rearward view)
Y’know, this guy’s growing on me. He’s like a less-evil Lex Luthor. All technological progress, no weird xenophobia.
He seems more like Maxwell Lord to me. The comic book version, not the one from the Supergirl TV show.
I’d say I get more of a David Xanatos vibe off of him.
I’m thinking, from everything I’ve ever heard, more like Blackie DuQuesne from Doc Smith’s ‘Skylark Of Space’ books. He’s absolutely not a “nice” person, but you are fine as long as you don’t get in his way and, if the situation calls for it, he has no problem about teaming up with the Good Guys.
Hey Dave, I know you live in the Dallas area and I heard a story that you guys won some sort of game. Apparently it has something to do with comics because the prize is the “Stan Lee Cup”. To your team, I want to wish them the best and say “Excelsior!”
After his comments, I was expecting Sydney to put his name in the book
I seem to recall, ages and ages ago, that Sydney and Max went to Deus to get something – and that Syd was sent to the lab to pick it up. Shouldn’t she be carrying it?
https://www.grrlpowercomic.com/archives/2057
If what the scientist is holding is the whole unit, it may just be in a pocket.
Well in that case I would expect to see a bulge where one of her pockets was. Sydney’s a small person in a well tailored uniform, even a unit that size is going to stick out on her.
No, Sydney was simply sent to the labs for a tour (and to keep her out of Maxi’s hair while they discussed the participants on the losing side of the Parking Lot Rumble)
I have to admit, I did skim the first panel, but it’s ok, because I know that speech by heart, more or less… I might get the corrupt politicians and teachers of morals mixed up, but I think that makes it more realistic.
Well she already knows about aliens, and I assume that the fact the Deus knows really isn’t such a big deal. The way the story’s gone, I’d guess you’re going one of a few different ways with it.
We know Syndey lied about the origin of her orbs. Scuba diving indeed. My guess is Green Lantern origin.
And Deus seems like the sort of guy who’d sell out to alien invasion in order to become overlord of Terra.
I think Deus would only ever ‘sell out’ to alien invaders (or, far more likely, let said aliens think he is doing so) as part of his larger scheme to become THEIR overlord as well.
We already see that his ambitions / intentions are not confimed to Earth.
How do we know that Sydney lied about the orbs’ origin, or exactly which of the things she said were lies?
I only got the impression that she was being cagey – and maybe lying – about just where she was scuba diving.
Yes, it was only the location where she found her balls that had Big Brass (and Ari) looking doubtfully at each other
Deus strikes me more as the type of person who would see himself as the savior of humanity (by ruling it). More like a David Xanatos than a sellout turncoat. He’d probably double-cross the aliens and set himself up a the hero. People will more readily follow a savior than a dictator, after all. Like he did in Galtyn (sp?)
small little dot.
Come on Sagan, you’re looking at this all wrong. We need to have the little rivers of blood before we can get to the oceans. Of blood.
…Y’know, this metaphor is suddenly making me uncomfortable.
Hey, I have that poster too. It isn’t as big as that one, but it is the same speech with the same picture.
I actually managed to read the entire first panel. AND I have ADHD. I read stuff like that because I NEED to know or it will drive me nuts because on top of my ADHD, I also have OCD.
Same here, even the squirrels stopped being distracting enough to read along with me :D
I love that speech. I love Carl Sagan. I used to watch Cosmos when it was on PBS back in the day, and that show never failed to wow me. Carl, we miss you.
I actually took a college course at a community college in “Cosmos”. Got an A or 4.0 for those who have to nitpick. It lead to a group of use building an observatory for the colleges 12in telescope.
read the “poster” – wall of text.
read the TLDR -nods in agriment.
watched the link, it does have gravitas, so much so it is sucked up
it´s own backside.
“Get your butt in here, Scoville!” Her butt is already in the elevator. It is her torso and head that need to get in the elevator.
Jesus, Dave. Calibri? Really?
Well since everyone is talking about profound things that get them teary eyed.
Here is my contribution.
https://tindeck.com/listen/rdhu
It saddens me that my profound contribution was Wakko’s Universe.