NASA?s most advanced telescope complete after 20 years (PHOTO)

Your second paragraph contradicts the first...

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman
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Unfortunately not!

Otherwise intelligent people can have bizarre beliefs; I offer this usenet group as a proof of that :)

Reply to
Tom Gardner

"Otherwise"??? If you have a PhD in astrophysics and yet believe the moon is made of green cheese, I think that says something about your "otherwise" credentials.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

You postulating a ridiculous example doesn't make the original statement false. I knew a capable engineer who believed in astrology. Many scientists are religious. Astrophysicists believe everything originated in a tremendous explosion of nothing. Physicists believe cats can be dead and alive at the same time. Bizarre beliefs, every one of them.

Jeroen (who believes himself rational) Belleman

Reply to
Jeroen Belleman

The latter doesn't necessarily conflict with science although you might look unfavourably on a geologist who was also a Young Earth Creationist or worse still a Flat Earther.

Supersititious scientists are another thing entirely. There was a famous name scientist with a horseshoe nailed to his lab door for good luck. A visiting scientist from another institution asked the first guy "You don't believe in that old superstition do you?" to which the first answered "No. But I'm told it works whether you believe in it or not!".

Curiously the placebo effect in medicine actually does obey this rule. Though placebos that cause minor but noticeable side effects work slightly better than just pure sugar pills.

It is just a large scale quantum fluctuation. Casimir effect demonstrates things popping in and out of existence on borrowed energy provided that you stay inside the uncertainty rules it works out OK.

Depends who you talk to. Until you collapse the wavefunction you don't know whether the cat is alive or dead but it will have been rotting away from the point when it expired when you do open the box.

Schrodinger's cat is an example intended to highlight the absurdity of quantum physics - whose only real defence is that mathematically it and the later QCD work exceedingly well. Feynman summed it up very well:

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Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

No, they are not all equivalent. Religion in particular can not be proven or disproven. It is constructed to be so, but that does not make it "bizarre".

An engineer who truly believes in astrology is a walking contradiction. This is an idea that can be tested and has been so. To believe in it is to dispute reality. Any scientist or engineer who believes in astrology would not be working for me.

The big bang and cat issues are ways to explain observations. They may be real or not, but that isn't what they are about. If you can't understand those concepts then I can't help you with it.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

Trump is a joke. As you will find out soon enough.

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Regards, 
Martin Brown
Reply to
Martin Brown

Oh, wise one. What stock should I buy today?

Reply to
krw

Of course a good scientist tries to find a theory that is as minimalistic as possible to explain the observed facts. Having a book of extra theory that does not contribute to proof is not what a good scientist should strive for.

Reply to
Rob

The problem with your theory is that "science" doesn't, and can't, explain everything. It can only reveal one level of the onion at a time.

Reply to
krw

Not to mention the "many worlds" interpretation of QM, in which an uncountable infinity of whole universes is postulated in order to avoid the obvious similarity of the Big Bang to "Let there be light". Not exactly Occam's Razor there. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
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Reply to
Phil Hobbs

But in the past, every time when a scientist found a scientific explanation of something that was previously attributed "to God", it turned out that that attribution was wrong. Everything up to now suggests that given enough time, there will be an explanation for everything and all the previously written religious explanations will be disproven.

In the meantime, of course people still believe otherwise.

Reply to
Rob

That "God of the gaps" bit is a canard. Knowing a bit about how God does things doesn't mean it isn't Him doing it. Even my Sunday school kids understood that.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
 Click to see the full signature
Reply to
Phil Hobbs

OK, when will science answer the question "Why?"?

No otherwise.

Reply to
krw

I see no reason to conclude that multiple universes exist simultaneously. I'm inclined to think the Big Bang happened repeatedly, and if the parameters are wrong then nobody evolves to question it.

Reply to
Tom Del Rosso

There is not necessarily an answer to that question. Of course it is understandable that people try to define an answer to that question themselves, but that does not mean the answer has to be true. To scientists, when there is not the slightest proof that a theory is true, it is not common to include that theory in the ways of explaining things.

Reply to
Rob

Bingo! That is the big question that religion tries to answer.

The above sentence makes no sense. If something is unknowable, "truth" is meaningless.

Of course, like all militant atheists, you miss the entire point. The entire subject is completely beyond your comprehension.

Reply to
krw

Sure, but there is also the question "where do all those presents at christmas come from" that parents answer because their kids want to hear it. That does not make the answer true.

Reply to
Rob

Snipping the rest shows that you're not even interested in learning. Rather, you're interested in hating the religious.

Reply to
krw

Am 12.11.2016 um 16:03 schrieb krw:

When I open my eyes and look at the world, by far the biggest group of haters are the religious.

And are they proud that their $GOD can safely hide behind their broad back! Works best for those who have nothing else to be proud on.

Gerhard

(Maybe the few Jains exempted and it fits the picture that they don't have gods.)

Reply to
Gerhard Hoffmann

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