Richard Dawkins on Religion

[MHz]

For example, how many people are aware that the Bering Straight Land Bridge theory has been debunked?

Why would they call it a land bridge when it should have has a glacier covering it that was several miles deep and that ice should have covered part of the Pacific ocean that would have been to the south of that piece of land. Same with the Atlantic, Greenland and Iceland could have been completely under the ice. They would not have even needed boats, they could have walked on the ice close to the shore, fish for food and ice for fresh water could have met most of their needs. Warm clothing would also be needed but other than that nothing would be a necessity for life.

 

[GreenFish66]

Well I guess someone had to take Darwins position..It can't be disproved but other theories stand up just as well!...Survival of the fitest only get's you so far in todays Universe!

 

[Cliffy]

Why would they call it a land bridge

MHz,

The theory is that the glaciers took so much water out of the system that sea level dropped 400 feet exposing an actual land bridge. As you can imagine, there are more holes here than Swiss cheese but that is what has been fed to school kids for the past hundred years or so.

But that is just one little example of information that is stifled to suit the egos of some scientists. Of course it is nothing compared to the truths that are buried in the black hole of religious beliefs.

 

[Scott Free]

30 seconds into #1 and I have a question. When they mention what science has done they bring up 3 'useful things'. Science is also behind some things that have resulted in many deaths. Science is behind every weapon ever made since they stopped throwing rocks at each other. Eradicated small-pox, maybe after they were done using it for a 'weapon'. Once it made it around the world everybody left should have immune to it anyway, the very back of the 'unexplored' world was the last place it was taken. Oddly enough that is where the 'vaccine' was first used and declared to be the cure/prevention. Then the rest of the world was charged $10 each for a shot that was as effective against small-pox as distilled water is against anything.
60billion thoughts/sec on a computer but not everybody has a pair of shoes or a book to read. Has science always taken the right direction in terms of what it focuses on? Is that direction controlled, if so then science is a tool, nothing else and tools are there to do brute force work with no morality entering the decision making process.

Science will spend (and demand even more) 60 billion to go to Mars but they will not spend 1/10 of that on projects that are more important to the needs of people that are alive, let alone the whole 60. Take away the money that is given to science that goes to something that harms man (or just has no immediate benefit) and apply it to projects that take care of some woes then explore the cosmos.

Other than that it was a great start, oh, why do (I assume these are scientists sitting around) they chant?

Science is man made and an improvement on religion. Where religion sought to offer explanations and improve lives so too does science. It has better checks and balances but anything we humans make is going to have errors. I'm sure whatever comes after science will be an even bigger improvement should our species survive long enough to invent it.

 

[gerryh]

The absence of an identifiable gravitron does not negate what we know about gravity or how it works, just as the absence of an indentifiable Higgs boson does not negate what we already know about .wave-particle duality

ROFLFMAO....... ya.... just have faith.....ROFLFMAO

 

[gerryh]

and cliffy.... the land bridge is stil the excepted theory...... There are other theory's, but they are still being worked on and there has been nothing conclusive to "debunk" the land bridge theory.

 

[MHz]

But that is just one little example of information that is stifled to suit the egos of some scientists. Of course it is nothing compared to the truths that are buried in the black hole of religious beliefs.

Two suppositions=2 links please.

 

[Vanni Fucci]

ROFLFMAO....... ya.... just have faith.....ROFLFMAO

where:

F is the magnitude of the gravitational force between the two point masses,
G is the gravitational constant,
m1 is the mass of the first point mass,
m2 is the mass of the second point mass,
r is the distance between the two point masses.

You figure it out gerry...

 

[Vanni Fucci]

And another thing...

It seems the ignorance of the religious indeed knows no bounds.

Some scientific explanations are so well established that no new evidence is likely to alter them. The explanation becomes a scientific theory. In everyday language a theory means a hunch or speculation. Not so in science. In science, the word theory refers to a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature supported by facts gathered over time. Theories also allow scientists to make predictions about as yet unobserved phenomena, [4]

A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world. The theory of biological evolution is more than "just a theory." It is as factual an explanation of the universe as the atomic theory of matter or the germ theory of disease. Our understanding of gravity is still a work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like evolution, is an accepted fact.[5]

But universal gravitation is not a scientific theory, it is a scientific law, which makes it even less assailable...

The laws of science are various established scientific laws, or physical laws as they are sometimes called, that are considered universal and invariable facts of the physical world. Laws of science may, however, be disproved if new facts or evidence contradicts them. A "law" differs from hypotheses, theories, postulates, principles, etc., in that a law is an analytic statement, usually with an empirically determined constant. A theory may contain a set of laws, or a theory may be implied from an empirically determined law.

 

[Cliffy]

the land bridge is stil the excepted theory......

gerryh,

I just finished writing a book about the Arrow Lakes Indians and their 10 thousand year history in BC. I spent a year researching many different sources, including talking to archaeologists. When I presented my conclusions, he agreed. A handful may have made that trek, but the majority arrived here by boat or by foot along the coast (both east and west) that was exposed by the drastic drop in water volume. A recent find off the coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands at a depth of 160 feet below sea level shows the remains of cooked pygmy horse (extinct for 10 thousand years) along side stone tools.

There is evidence all over the Americas that people from just about every corner of the world visited here at one time or another. It is now thought that a previous migration originating from Polynesia and possibly Australia arrived here long before the previous Ice Age. They were called Paleo-American.

 

[Cliffy]

MHz,

Google "Unknown History". Many of my sources were magazine articles from National Geographic and the Smithsonian Institute on the latest archaeological finds that I found online. Have fun!

As for religion burying information in their black hole of superstition, you can begin with evolution. Like that bumper sticker someone posted today said, "I visited a Creationist Museum and all I got was stupider."

 

[Scott Free]

where:

F is the magnitude of the gravitational force between the two point masses,
G is the gravitational constant,
m1 is the mass of the first point mass,
m2 is the mass of the second point mass,
r is the distance between the two point masses.

You figure it out gerry...

Horizon What on earth is - Google Video

 

[Vanni Fucci]

Horizon What on earth is - Google Video

Cool video...

I maintain though that just because we have no identifiable graviton, does not mean that we don't know what gravity is or how it works...

...but there is certainly room to expand upon our knowledge, as there is in everything...

...we don't know everything there is to know about biological evolution, yet we know enough to know enough to know it exists, what it is, and how it works...

...the experiments to determine these factors have been confirmed since the theories were first postulated...

...if we are to deny what we know about gravitation because we have not yet seen a graviton in action, then we too must deny what we know about evolution because of gaps in the fossil record...

...and if that happens we may as well just huddle together and start chanting the irriducible complexity mantra like all the other slack-jawed, mouth-breathing creationist fundies...:lol:

 

[SirJosephPorter]

I remember reading a fascinating speculation about gravity a while ago. It had to do with String Theory. String Theory is the red hot item these days, it shows plenty of promise when it comes to workings of the universe.

String Theory postulates existence of ten dimensions (and eleventh of time). However, we can only perceive three dimensions (and time), how can we detect the presence of higher dimensions? They are trying to devise experiments with the new 27 mile long super colloider which recently came on line.

But the speculation about gravity is this: we know that gravity is a very weak interpartical force, the weakest force of them all (weaker that strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force etc.). Why is gravity so all pervading, yet so weak? One speculation is that gravity may be a higher dimensional force, may exist in more than three dimensions. Its projection in three dimensions may be very small, that is why we perceive gravity as a weak force. Same as there may be a sphere of 100 cm radius, but its projection on a particular plain may be a circle of 1 cm radius.

 

[Vanni Fucci]

I've read books that pretty much said the same thing, and if physicists able to prove some of what they're saying, then our understanding of the universe will increase exponentially...

It's a little early in their theorizing for me to buy into it just yet though...

Here's a good book that explains the concepts very well

Amazon.com: Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimens ion: Michio Kaku: Books