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We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

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Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#601

Post by xabotage »

necovek wrote: post #576
xabotage wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Faith is belief without evidence or belief in the presence of contrary evidence. If we were to suppose the "base presumptions" of science were on the same level as religious claims, then they could be arbitrarily ignored without real-world consequences.

I guess you are unacquainted with formal axiomatic basis for the most formal of all sciences (mathematics). Eg. natural numbers are defined by assuming that there exists one, and that there is a successor to one: everything else flows from that (this is an older system, but more approachable than the set theory one). Basically, we never, ever prove that one indeed exists, or that it has a successor: these are assumpt…

Numbers are a human construct, just like words in a language. They don't "exist" in the same sense as anything physically real. Nobody has "faith" in the number one, it's just a concept that's proven to be universally useful. If it weren't useful, people wouldn't (and couldn't) conceptualize it. Again, faith is believing in something despite lack of evidence or despite evidence to the contrary.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#602

Post by xabotage »

al_mandi wrote: post #591
xabotage wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did I know before I clicked that link that it was going to be apologetics. Faith is not a shortcut to knowledge. "Hey, we can't yet find the answer to big questions through rational means, so let's try irrational means!"

You can throw around words like "apolegetics", but that doesn't make it less correct. Islam has proof and evidence (e.g. http://provingislam.com , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTsEZXx8kRg , https://www.reddit.com/r/islam/comments/hxn276/here_are_some... , and much more). Don't present a false dichotomy between science and faith where there isn't any for us in Islam.

Interesting how you just said science "cannot be used to explain everything" and yet now you're claiming "proof" and "evidence" (i.e. science) for your particular religion. Make up your mind.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#603

Post by cwalv »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #404
cwalv wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that faith is believing without objective evidence. It's believing without certainty

The Christian bible (Hebrews 11:1) and Merriam Webster appear to disagree [0]. [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith

The most relevant definition (i.e. the only one that states anything about evidence) from your link seems to agree:

> 2.b. firm belief in something for which there is no proof

With respect to the Christian Bible reference, I don't read it as saying there's no evidence for what they believe; I think you'd have a hard time finding a Christian who does.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#604

Post by michaelmrose »

al_mandi wrote: post #354
michaelmrose wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science chooses minimal axioms and builds the flesh of the world based on the existing bones ready to revise when new bones are discovered. Religion chooses a substantial set of axioms derived from a mixture of philosophy and fantasy dreamt up by our pre scientific ancestors who thought bad smells caused disease then makes many forms of revision sinful. A set of beliefs without ability to revise everything from the g…

Just because the sets are of different size does not mean one is incorrect. You're also straw manning by talking about pre ancestors and bad smells.

You can't win arguments by playing logical fallacies like they are uno cards. I was pointing out that the same ancestors who dreamt up the axioms you aren't allowed by religious law to fully revise or toss out had understandings limited by the information available in that antique period. Only hundreds of years ago medical professionals believed in the miasma theory of disease and before that both of our ancestors believed that sickness had paranormal causes.

The problem with your set of axioms isn't MERELY the size. It's that you are asked to buy them in a box sealed millennia ago by people who if they were transported to our time frame would be regarded as lunatics because they believe crazy shit. Worse you are offered imaginary immortality and the threat of imaginary perdition in order to obtain actual service in exchange for wholly fictional benefits.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#605

Post by dang »

eis wrote: post #600
barrysteve wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You constantly talk in the terms of faithful ideas and yet reject they exist. There is a reason you 'think this curious idea might be true' and the chain of ideas that got you to this point goes back a long way. And your thinking is usually influenced by unspoken ideas you take as prima facie true and acceptable, even though you never admit it. These ideas come from faith and if you understand their starting point, y…

> You constantly talk in the terms of faithful ideas and yet reject they exist. I'm perplexed why you say that I reject faithful ideas exist. I don't. > You don't know, what you don't know. Agreed. > This really feels like pearls before swine. Have a nice day. Wow what a rude and ignorant way to have a discussion. But ok, let's end it here.

You posted almost 60 (!) comments in this thread, including tons of religious flamewar comments, and breaking the site guidelines as you did here.

This is seriously not cool and we ban accounts that post like this, so please don't post like this again.

I've banned the other user that you got into the longest flamewar with, but this was definitely a multiperson tango.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#606

Post by dang »

eis wrote: post #80

Quoted post unavailable.

Taking HN threads into religious flamewar (or any flamewar), as you did here and in dozens of other comments in this thread, is seriously not ok on HN and will get you banned here.

The one you started with this throwaway swipe turned truly hellish. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. No more of this please!

Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do it again.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32619634.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#608

Post by eis »

dang wrote: post #606
eis wrote: post #80

Quoted post unavailable.

Taking HN threads into religious flamewar (or any flamewar), as you did here and in dozens of other comments in this thread, is seriously not ok on HN and will get you banned here. The one you started with this throwaway swipe turned truly hellish. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. No more of this please! Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do it again…

Yea I think this thread wasn't necessary. Cheers for bringing it up, it wasn't my intention but I agree I shouldn't have opened it like that and a lot of the followup discussion could have been avoided. I think I'll stay clear of anything touching religion as we see where that gets us. Point taken!

May I ask you though why you downvoted a bunch of my comments which I think had nothing to do with a flamewar, for example the ones in the discussion with origin_path? It must have been you because due to the age of the comments normal users are not able to downvote them anymore. I'm not saying I shouldn't be downvoted for the stuff that played into the flamewar but why the other stuff? My guess is that those also are not welcome on HN I'm just not 100% sure why or which rule these comments broke. Clarification on that would be welcome. I've duly reviewed the guidelines.

Anyways, thanks for the slap back to reality :)

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#609

Post by eis »

dang wrote: post #605
eis wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You constantly talk in the terms of faithful ideas and yet reject they exist. I'm perplexed why you say that I reject faithful ideas exist. I don't. > You don't know, what you don't know. Agreed. > This really feels like pearls before swine. Have a nice day. Wow what a rude and ignorant way to have a discussion. But ok, let's end it here.

You posted almost 60 (!) comments in this thread, including tons of religious flamewar comments, and breaking the site guidelines as you did here. This is seriously not cool and we ban accounts that post like this, so please don't post like this again. I've banned the other user that you got into the longest flamewar with, but this was definitely a multiperson tango. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I agree the religious flamewar was bad. Appologies for that.

Some of the other comments in this thread that contribute to the number you quoted were not contributing to a flamewar though so I don't think the number of comments is bad per se. It's just a topic I have interest in and commenting a lot can be also a sign of a lively discussion and not a flamewar - though a lot of it was! I've seen a preference on HN for 'post and drop' style which imho contributes to a more shallow discussion. Sometimes it might be hard to find the balance I guess. If one is passionate about a topic one can quickly get too engaged in it. Anyways, wont happen again. Cheers!

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#610

Post by dang »

eis wrote: post #608
dang wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking HN threads into religious flamewar (or any flamewar), as you did here and in dozens of other comments in this thread, is seriously not ok on HN and will get you banned here. The one you started with this throwaway swipe turned truly hellish. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. No more of this please! Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do it again…

Yea I think this thread wasn't necessary. Cheers for bringing it up, it wasn't my intention but I agree I shouldn't have opened it like that and a lot of the followup discussion could have been avoided. I think I'll stay clear of anything touching religion as we see where that gets us. Point taken! May I ask you though why you downvoted a bunch of my comments which I think had nothing to do with a flamewar, for examp…

Thanks for the kind replies, I know it's not pleasant to get a moderation scolding like that.

There's sort of a fuzzy line between outright flamewar and generic ideological tangents (which religious topics certainly are covered by), both of which are against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). I agree that not all those exchanges were equally flamey, but I just don't think generic religious argumentation is on topic here. If you want to argue that I was a bit too indiscriminate, I'd say you may have a point :)

On the other hand, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32619634 was on topic and a really nice historical contribution to the specific topic of the thread—the point at which the discussion went generic-religious (flamewar or not) was the point at which the quality of the discussion plummeted.

I hope this helps explain things a bit!

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