1. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #13199 by aidanjt on December 16, 2006 at 5:47 am

"Some particles are composites" according to quantum mechanics, not string theory, in which this curious particle interaction is the result of strings being chopped up and recombined, in an almost DNA-like behaviour.

I'm not saying string theory is unverifiable, just that we wont be able to look inside particles to see exactly what makes them tick.

I'm glad this little discussion of ours has sparked off renewed interest in physics in some, string theory is a lot to take on board though, it's scope is practically as large as the universe itself.. And then some. :)

2. Blaming 'The God Delusion'

Comment #13075 by aidanjt on December 15, 2006 at 9:26 am

"I am from Northern Ireland, and I can confirm that Dawkins is correct to say that "the words 'nationalist' and 'loyalist' are, in their Northern Irish context, merely euphemisms for 'Catholic' and 'Protestant,' respectively"."

Agreed, these are common stereotypes in Northern Ireland. I was brought up in Northern Ireland, being Irish and living in a protestant neighbourhood I got a lot of flack for being considered a catholic and thus a nationalist for the same reasons, despite being christened in an Anglican Church as a child, nor harbouring any desire to have the six counties reunited with the Republic. Religious bigotry dies hard.

3. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #13029 by aidanjt on December 15, 2006 at 5:31 am

rossi:

I get what you're saying, but there is no conclusive evidence either way. Both arguments are speculatory in nature. I don't deal in speculation, I keep an open mind about any possibility. Therefore I have no opinion regarding the existence of God(s), and will remain firmly agnostic.

Furthermore, any discussion regarding the existence of God is nothing more than philosophical musings, and ultimately a fruitless endeavour.

That's not to say that I don't see the damage that religion causes. Which is very evident in itself. However, you can't blame God(s) which you don't believe in as the cause for man's inhumanity to man.

4. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #13015 by aidanjt on December 15, 2006 at 4:25 am

John, here's the nail ---| and here's the head |8,

Never has a truer word been said. There's always purpose or a reason for any action. I've done my fair share of 'selfless' acts over the years, yet I admit the warm fuzzy feeling for doing something good or right is something of a motivator.

5. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #12925 by aidanjt on December 14, 2006 at 12:25 pm

Jack:

There's a good reason why physicists use mathematics to express their ideas, not because it's natural, its the lack of ambiguous expression. I'm not against art and literature, I find some forms of art pleasant, but in language it's very very important for thoughts to be conveyed clearly, the ambiguity of human languages causes all kinds of problems in discussions such as these, as well as other inappropriate moments.

I'm sorry you don't really agree with the rest that I said, that of course, being your prerogative, to form your own opinions based on your own relative prospective of life.

Note that I did include the exclaimer in my statement about the sun rising in the morning "barring some freak act of God", in which some exotic cosmic event could potentially stop the earth from spinning, in which case we'd all be dead and we wouldn't really care. :/

6. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #12911 by aidanjt on December 14, 2006 at 10:40 am

I simply can't agree with that assertion. The primary means we view this magnificent universe we live in is observing photons bouncing back from bundles of atoms.

Splitting atoms requires a large burst of energy, fusing atoms requires more energy still, trying to spit and observe a particle is a physical impossibility, to approach anywhere near the energy to required to do so would require a super-heavy mass such as a huge singularity in the center of a galaxy, in which case, all bets are off, since no observations can be made of the core of a black hole. And even at that, there's no guarantees that even the devastating force of a singularity can break up particles.

It's not a matter of technological discovery, it's a physical barrier as sure as the fact that atoms can't travel faster than the speed of light in our spacetime.

I'm sorry that I went way over people's heads, I only brought up string theory as a philosophical example. In a truer physical sense it is intended to calm the exotic nature of quantum mechanics.

7. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #12896 by aidanjt on December 14, 2006 at 8:53 am

Clearly that's a lack of understanding of strings and matter on your part. These are facts acknowledged by scientists on both sides of the fence.

8. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #12893 by aidanjt on December 14, 2006 at 8:35 am

Not all energy is initially observable, it's only recently that zero-point (or vacuum) energy has been observed in laboratory conditions, thanks to modern quantum mechanical concepts, many decades after the concept was originally proposed. Strings on the other hand are much lower level physics than anything previously imagined.

I'm simply pointing out that not all theories are verifiable by scientific method, it doesn't mean that the theory is void of merit, and should be left open to the possibility of it being true, regardless of how improbable and far fetched it may sound.

Like sailing around the world, splitting the atom, flying to the moon. All of which were once widely regarded as science fiction at best, or outright insane.

9. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #12884 by aidanjt on December 14, 2006 at 7:50 am

Jack:

Why shouldn't we strive for absolute knowledge?.. Einstein made the same pursuit his life's work. It's important to set clearly defined boundaries in language, ambiguity serves no purpose in science or language. dictionary.com defines atheist as "a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.", and .agnostic primarily as "a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.".

I'm not saying that anything is absolutely certain, which is the whole point of being agnostic, I'm saying things don't just drop into black and white categories, belief and disbelief, which is simpily an opinion, you can be unopinionated in a belief without disbelief. I'm trying to distinguish the clear use of language, which in itself is an inherent problem with human languages.

This means we, as rational thinking people, can look upon evidence and form a rational opinion of the facts without critical bias, that's not to say that agnostics are without any kind of bias, it just means they're between the two extremes.

You can be agnostic about Thor yes, or if Mary really gave birth a virgin, these are beliefs. But other things such as we having a mother, which is a biological fact, humans children require a 9 month incubation period in their mothers womb. And just as certain, the sun will rise tomorrow barring some freak act of God and the earth stops rotating on its axis. In which case we'd all die from the violent aftermath of the sudden deceleration of the earth.

10. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #12872 by aidanjt on December 14, 2006 at 6:01 am

I'm sorry if I was vague, sub-atomic particles, being protons, electrons, neutrons, photons, neutrinos, and so on, so forth, being the stuff that matter is comprised of, as the theory goes, are themselves comprised of vibrating strands (or strings) of pure energy.
Being that even the largest super-colliders can only detect particles themsevles, we will never be able to detect or obverse in any way the interior of these particles, string theory will never be fully verifiable.

11. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #12828 by aidanjt on December 14, 2006 at 1:15 am

Torbjörn Larsson:

I like wikipedia for many things, but word definitions aren't one of them, there tends to be some ambiguity from the authors views. Plus it would probably be a good idea to read the citations of that article.

On the other point, you can't simply dismiss a theory solely on the grounds of unprovability, take string theory for example, it is completely impossible to make an observation of the interior of a sub-atomic particle, however the math does add up, so likewise you can come to three main conclusions, that its a) outright nonsense, b) possible, and c) absolute truth.

Personally I take position b, since I acknowledge that we will never know if all matter is made up from energy strings or not.

12. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #12823 by aidanjt on December 14, 2006 at 1:01 am

I suppose it depends on their ratio of faith:reason, and that in itself would probably depend on their upbringing. I'd be willing to bet that a near majority of Christians are closet agnostics.

13. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #12818 by aidanjt on December 14, 2006 at 12:53 am

Probably, I'm just trying to clear up the terminology, most people seem to get confused by the varying terms being touted about, especially the theists.

14. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #12815 by aidanjt on December 14, 2006 at 12:49 am

well a 'theist' that wasn't 100% certain of God's existence wasn't really theist, but in fact agnostic. Faith in God hinges solely on blind belief.

15. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #12813 by aidanjt on December 14, 2006 at 12:27 am

John Pritzlaff:

I'm sorry, I don't agree with that, being agnostic is acknowledgment of the fact that there is no way to neither prove nor disprove whether god exists or not, thus has no opinion or belief either way, belief has nothing to do with it, it's an undenialbe fact. Atheism on the other hand is outright denial of any form of deity which is illogical and a form of belief.

For example, if God produced evidence of 'his' existence somehow, an agnostic would review the evidence and reevaluate their conclusions, an atheist would still deny, thus the difference.

So being atheist is equally as illogical and delusional as the hordes of Bible thumpers which disgust me so.

Logicel:
It's more to do with the absence of belief.

16. In case you didn't know I'm a fool, here's an article to prove it.

Comment #12782 by aidanjt on December 13, 2006 at 7:57 pm

I think there's a ridiculous association of agnosticism with atheism.. From the YouTube clip I saw of Richard Dawkins speaking to the audience, he is clearly agnostic, being that he has clearly (and rightly) admitted that upon given evidence to the existence of God(s) singular or plural, he would change his opinion. Being that pure atheism is the belief of the non-existence of God(s) dispite any evidence to the contrary, which would in fact be a form of dogmatism in itself.

Anyway, I think it's sad that a person can't state their opinion without being ridiculed by fanatics and charlatans all of whom assert that their one of hundreds of religions/beliefs/deities are infallible. Lets consider the undisputable fact that throughout written history, religion has been the single greatest cause of hate, wars, & genocide, not God(s), not lust, nor greed, but religion, a narrow minded static set of beliefs. And contrary to Dr. Dooleys' claims, it wasn't Darwin, Nazism and Marxism that caused the mass slaughter of world war 2, it was the world's unwillingness to act when something could have been done about Hitler's prelude to war. And even if it were, it pales in comparison to the countless billions throughout the ages that have been slaughtered in the name of religion. And we wont even go near the fact that the Vaticans refused to condem Hitler's act of mass genocide (and its countless other skeletons in its preverbial closet).

It's becoming plainly obvious to me that people are holding their religion in much higher regard than the deities their religion was centered around.

I'm also finding it difficult to comprehend that people actually think that it's impossible for an agnostic or atheist to lead a happy, and moral life without religion. That is the most rediculious, offensive and falacious assertions I have come across in my life. I was brought up with a Christian background, went to Church, Sunday School, and so on. I just never adopted it, none of it made any sense, and for a time I was outright atheist, challenging every religious debate with vigor. Now at no point in my life, had I ever had any kind of violent, murderous, or genocidal impulses, I live a happy life, and I haven't depended on any mythical deity for that happiness and love for other people.

One of the more interesting events of my atheist days is when I was having a lengthy debate regarding the existance of God with a Mormon, in the end he offered to mail a book to me which debates the existance of God, I agreed, some time later, long after I had forgotten the whole arguement I received this book through the door entitled "When skeptics ask: a handbook on christian evidences", written by Norman Geisler, and Ron Brooks.. as I promised I read through the book with an open mind, after going through some half-shod arguments for the existance of God, I hit the inevitable scripture rethoric.. so basically it still stemmed down to this "God exists", "How do you know?", "Because the Bible says so", "The Bible was written by men", "Yes, with Gods holy inspiration", "According to whom?", "The Bible", "Right".
In psychiatry, I believe this behaviour is reffered to as a self-reinforcing delousion, further proving Dawkins correct.

I don't hate people with faith, I'm just disgruntled with religious nonsense and dogma.

Just my 2c on the article.