Bill Maher - "Ground Zero" Mosque and other issues.

[DrPizza]

This video available anywhere else?

 

[sandorski]

Maher is the quintessentially whiny liberal. When he went as far as to call the terrorists courageous and our military cowards he should have been extradited to Abu Ghraib (the Saddam Hussein era Abu Ghraib).

Fail

 

[woolfe9999]

Rational can go both ways.

Important to the beginning of any argument about God's existence is the admission that it's difficult to objectively prove anything. It's difficult to prove, beyond anyone's capacity to deny, my own existence.

We're not arguing in favor of just a flying spaghetti monster, we're arguing in favor of a flying spaghetti monster which is the ultimate origin of all things. I'm simply arguing that there is some intelligent force which created and ordered the universe and all reality. That doesn't seem to me to be so dogmatic nor irrational an assumption.

Yes, but it remains an assumption until proven with evidence. To be clear, I don't consider it unreasonable as a conjecture. It's as good as the next (actually, they are all equally bad). The fact is, we do not know why there is "something rather than nothing." The big bang might explain the universe, but it doesn't explain why there was a singularity that exploded to begin with. If you *really* want to make your brain hurt over that question, then you have to ask the question, if it was an intelligent designer, then what explains the existence of the intelligent designer. This isn't an argument in favor of any other explanation. It just means we can't answer that particular question and very likely never will.

That said, insofar as 1) why this particular universe exists in its present form, and 2) why life and humans exist on the earth, we have naturalistic explanations for which there is at least *some* evidence. For God, not so much.

- wolf

 

[Grooveriding]

At the tevatron protons are created with some regularity.

What you are referring to is the detection of a preponderance for there to be more matter than anti-matter which translates to the reason there is anything here at all.

What you did not include is that those scientists still don't know why that happened in the past and is showing up in their experiments.

This sort of discussion goes beyond science and I think given all that we are exposed to in this world and can see and feel gives credence to their being room for science and things beyond science to both co-exist.

It is generally thought that where you see a pattern there is intelligent life, and searches for life in other parts of the universe use this guideline for their work. If you look at the underlying mechanics of the universe, the mathematics of it, there is pattern there. To look at more immediate demonstrations, the simple harmony of nature and how so many small pieces fit together to make everything work, speaks to something beyond random.

Like so many things this is all subjective and wide open to different opinions. There really is no right or wrong with a subject like this, as no one knows all the answers or even the questions.

I think we probably never will and are better off not knowing. We have a history of taking new discoveries and using them to accelerate our own destruction. Do people actually believe we will even survive as a species to the point that we can travel across the universe and ever confirm whether there is more out there ? With what we know now, and the distances involved, it would literally require a form of teleporting, bending space and time to actually cover the vast distances. We will be long gone before we ever reach that ability.

 

[sandorski]

What you are referring to is the detection of a preponderance for there to be more matter than anti-matter which translates to the reason there is anything here at all.

What you did not include is that those scientists still don't know why that happened in the past and is showing up in their experiments.

This sort of discussion goes beyond science and I think given all that we are exposed to in this world and can see and feel gives credence to their being room for science and things beyond science to both co-exist.

It is generally thought that where you see a pattern there is intelligent life, and searches for life in other parts of the universe use this guideline for their work. If you look at the underlying mechanics of the universe, the mathematics of it, there is pattern there. To look at more immediate demonstrations, the simple harmony of nature and how so many small pieces fit together to make everything work, speaks to something beyond random.

Like so many things this is all subjective and wide open to different opinions. There really is no right or wrong with a subject like this, as no one knows all the answers or even the questions.

I think we probably never will and are better off not knowing. We have a history of taking new discoveries and using them to accelerate our own destruction. Do people actually believe we will even survive as a species to the point that we can travel across the universe and ever confirm whether there is more out there ? With what we know now, and the distances involved, it would literally require a form of teleporting, bending space and time to actually cover the vast distances. We will be long gone before we ever reach that ability.

Yes, we do use New Knowledge for Destruction, but at the same time we use it for Creation as well.

It is very possible that other Life exists not only elsewhere in the Universe, but very possibly within our own solar system.

As for Travel between Stars, it wasn't that long ago when we thought Flight was not possible. Our Knowledge will continue to grow and one day someone will Stumble upon or purposely Discover the Knowledge that makes such travel possible.

 

[Daedalus685]

What you are referring to is the detection of a preponderance for there to be more matter than anti-matter which translates to the reason there is anything here at all.

What you did not include is that those scientists still don't know why that happened in the past and is showing up in their experiments.

This sort of discussion goes beyond science and I think given all that we are exposed to in this world and can see and feel gives credence to their being room for science and things beyond science to both co-exist.

It is generally thought that where you see a pattern there is intelligent life, and searches for life in other parts of the universe use this guideline for their work. If you look at the underlying mechanics of the universe, the mathematics of it, there is pattern there. To look at more immediate demonstrations, the simple harmony of nature and how so many small pieces fit together to make everything work, speaks to something beyond random.

Like so many things this is all subjective and wide open to different opinions. There really is no right or wrong with a subject like this, as no one knows all the answers or even the questions.

I think we probably never will and are better off not knowing. We have a history of taking new discoveries and using them to accelerate our own destruction. Do people actually believe we will even survive as a species to the point that we can travel across the universe and ever confirm whether there is more out there ? With what we know now, and the distances involved, it would literally require a form of teleporting, bending space and time to actually cover the vast distances. We will be long gone before we ever reach that ability.

No, you don't understand. What I am referring to is the creation of matter and antimatter. I'm not sure how you got baryogenesis from that.

High energy photons can spontaneously (in the right proximity to a massive nucleus) become matter, in the form of a matter - antimatter pair (both are created as a result of conservation of quantum numbers). I quite often deal with gamma rays resulting in positron electron pairs at work. In a hugely high energy particle accelerator like the tevatron they are able to accomplish the same thing with more massive particles (much more energy) such as a proton and antiproton (though they do it by smashing protons together, not photons into a target... still mass from energy though). I don't consider a gamma ray beam as creating matter very often... but that is what it is doing when it interacts with a target (just that the matter it creates annihilates almost immediately).

That being said, baryogenesis (the stage of the universe where matter started to outnumber anti matter which occurred just after inflation) is not well understood... but it has nothing to do with creating an atom out of 'nothing' and nothing to do with what I was saying. But because it is not understood fully is no reason to claim it goes beyond science.. as it most certainly doesn't.

The rest of your post doesn't deal with anything I tried to point out. Though I'm certain human life will extend beyond earth eventually. You forget that high speed is only one way of travelling a long distance. In its absence (not saying it is impossible) we are left with extending life, or simply pausing it. Relativity also means that if we ever reach a point we can travel at nearly the speed of light a crew may be able to get a lot farther in a modest life time than you think.

 

[Grooveriding]

No, you don't understand. What I am referring to is the creation of matter and antimatter. I'm not sure how you got baryogenesis from that.

High energy photons can spontaneously (in the right proximity to a massive nucleus) become matter, in the form of a matter - antimatter pair (both are created as a result of conservation of quantum numbers). I quite often deal with gamma rays resulting in positron electron pairs at work. In a hugely high energy particle accelerator like the tevatron they are able to accomplish the same thing with more massive particles (much more energy) such as a proton and antiproton (though they do it by smashing protons together, not photons into a target... still mass from energy though). I don't consider a gamma ray beam as creating matter very often... but that is what it is doing when it interacts with a target (just that the matter it creates annihilates almost immediately).

That being said, baryogenesis (the stage of the universe where matter started to outnumber anti matter which occurred just after inflation) is not well understood... but it has nothing to do with creating an atom out of 'nothing' and nothing to do with what I was saying. But because it is not understood fully is no reason to claim it goes beyond science.. as it most certainly doesn't.

The rest of your post doesn't deal with anything I tried to point out. Though I'm certain human life will extend beyond earth eventually. You forget that high speed is only one way of travelling a long distance. In its absence (not saying it is impossible) we are left with extending life, or simply pausing it. Relativity also means that if we ever reach a point we can travel at nearly the speed of light a crew may be able to get a lot farther in a modest life time than you think.

Alrighty, well I only was trying to put across that for myself, there are things science simply cannot explain, no one can. And there is more going on around us than science can make evident.

I wish I had your optimism. I give us 1000 years at the very best, likely less than that before we poison the planet, blow it up, die of nuclear or environmental winter, and a myriad of other projects like these we are all collectively working on currently.

 

[Daedalus685]

Alrighty, well I only was trying to put across that for myself, there are things science simply cannot explain, no one can. And there is more going on around us than science can make evident.

I wish I had your optimism. I give us 1000 years at the very best, likely less than that before we poison the planet, blow it up, die of nuclear or environmental winter, and a myriad of other projects like these we are all collectively working on currently.

I must stress that by humans I don't necessarily mean our civilization. It is perfectly acceptable that we will kill ourselves mostly off at some point in time. I simply find it inevitable that life will reach that point on earth at some point and that we are not in a position to cause the extinction of our entire race, decimate out society sure. If in 200 years we download ourselves em mass into digital forms and send those to another planet does it still count?

Though if I were to guess at how things will turn out I'd lean closer to Ray Kurzwiel's ideas than George Orwell's.

 

[hal2kilo]

Is there actually any Wingnut Comedians, at least ones that are funny? Dennis Miller sure isn't and hasn't been since he left SNL.

You got that right. I never really found him all that funny when he was on SNL. Someone should tell him that talking points aren't funny.

 

[sandorski]

You got that right. I never really found him all that funny when he was on SNL. Someone should tell him that talking points aren't funny.

I always liked Dennis Miller. Mainly because his comedy is mostly tongue twisting sentences filled with big irregularly used words. A good portion of his comedy is just seeing someone make it through such a tangle and still make sense at the same time. Like him or not, but he spends a lot of time in Writing and preparation. It's kinda like a Verbal Slapstick routine.

 

[Grooveriding]

If in 200 years we download ourselves em mass into digital forms and send those to another planet does it still count?

That would be awesome! And of course it would count, I'm sure there are people out there working on interfacing our brain to a man-made computer, and finding a way to transfer data.