Author Topic: "Prosperity Gospel"  (Read 88388 times)

DoubleDown

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #350 on: September 14, 2015, 09:12:38 AM »
No educated person living in America today seriously believes the entire Earth was flooded 6000 years ago, killing all life on the planet except what Noah put on boat.  Because that's stupid and everyone knows it.  It's easy to disprove ten different ways.  Why do we keep pretending we actually believe it?

I'll pick on just this one straw man argument as an example of why your continued proposition that faith and science are incompatible is not intellectually honest. You are correct, people of faith who also understand science realize the entire Earth was not flooded 6000 years ago. And guess what? The Bible doesn't say it did either. That's right, the original Hebrew in the Bible said the entire land was flooded. And the Hebrew word for "land" means the local area, not the Entire Planet. It's only watered-down children's stories or pop culture that came up with the mythological stories of the entire globe being flooded.

I use this as just one example of how false, straw-man arguments are being used to portray religious belief as obviously untrue and disproved by science.

Mississippi Mudstache

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #351 on: September 14, 2015, 09:20:55 AM »
It's only watered-down children's stories or pop culture that came up with the mythological stories of the entire globe being flooded.

I use this as just one example of how false, straw-man arguments are being used to portray religious belief as obviously untrue and disproved by science.

Bullshit. I was raised in a church that still sincerely believes that the entire world was flooded in recent history. There are still many, many Christians who believe that every word of the Old Testament is to be taken literally. My Dad, my grandparents, and two of my three siblings are included among them. For instance, take a gander at this website if you have the stomach for it: http://www.grandcanyonflood.com/. I've heard this shit preached from a pulpit, at a loud volume, to a chorus of amens.
« Last Edit: September 14, 2015, 09:23:15 AM by Mississippi Mudstache »

DoubleDown

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #352 on: September 14, 2015, 09:33:16 AM »
I don't dispute that all kinds of people believe all kinds of stupid stuff. But if they are taking the Bible literally, they should believe the localized area was completely flooded, and not the entire Earth. Because that's what it literally says.

Mississippi Mudstache

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #353 on: September 14, 2015, 09:49:05 AM »
I should probably add that the same denominations who believe in the literal word of the Old Testament, don't actually have a fucking clue what the Old Testament actually says, because they also believe that the King James Version is the inerrant word of God and the only acceptable translation, and since the KJV translates the Hebrew word אָ֫רֶץ as "earth" not "land" in the Genesis story of the great flood, that obviously means that the entire earth was flooded.

sol

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #354 on: September 14, 2015, 10:56:12 AM »
I use this as just one example of how false, straw-man arguments are being used to portray religious belief as obviously untrue and disproved by science.

I'm not sure I've communicated effectively enough here, if you think this is a straw man argument.  I wasn't proposing that the bible is full of lies because of Noah's flood.  I was proposing that it is full of lies because of the hundreds of fantastical magical obviously made-up impossible stores it contains, of which Noah's flood is one example.  These are fairy tales, and while they were originally written to help illustrate the message, in modern society we should be able to see the message without all the fairy tale window dressing.

So unless you have an alternative translation for every instance of a miracle in the bible, ala T. Jefferson, I think your response is just misdirection.  Jefferson loved the message too, and so transcribed his own version without the magic.  The problem here is that modern Christianity seems absolutely dependent on the magic parts, like you can't be saved unless you confess your belief in the supernatural, which I think undermines the valuable parts.

Gin1984

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #355 on: September 14, 2015, 11:06:20 AM »
I use this as just one example of how false, straw-man arguments are being used to portray religious belief as obviously untrue and disproved by science.

I'm not sure I've communicated effectively enough here, if you think this is a straw man argument.  I wasn't proposing that the bible is full of lies because of Noah's flood.  I was proposing that it is full of lies because of the hundreds of fantastical magical obviously made-up impossible stores it contains, of which Noah's flood is one example.  These are fairy tales, and while they were originally written to help illustrate the message, in modern society we should be able to see the message without all the fairy tale window dressing.

So unless you have an alternative translation for every instance of a miracle in the bible, ala T. Jefferson, I think your response is just misdirection.  Jefferson loved the message too, and so transcribed his own version without the magic.  The problem here is that modern Christianity seems absolutely dependent on the magic parts, like you can't be saved unless you confess your belief in the supernatural, which I think undermines the valuable parts.
You have a very high expectation of modern society, why is that?

sol

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #356 on: September 14, 2015, 11:33:48 AM »
You have a very high expectation of modern society, why is that?

Because I'm an aspirational optimist?

Science has given us so much, so fast.  It has cured diseases, improved standards of living, fed and supported an exploding population, democratized information sharing, and expanded our understanding of our planet and our universe. 

I'd like to see those trends continue.  If the past 500 years took us from constantly battling starvation to thinking that in-flight wifi is mundane, imagine what 500 more could do.  Religion stands in the way of that progress, because it teaches people to turn away from knowledge and truth in favor of ancient superstitions.  I'd prefer to celebrate those superstitions as cultural history, rather than facts.

It's the only way to move forward, as a species.
« Last Edit: September 14, 2015, 11:50:31 AM by sol »

Tyson

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #357 on: September 14, 2015, 11:46:34 AM »
You have a very high expectation of modern society, why is that?

Because I'm an aspirational optimist?

Science has given us so much, so fast.  It has cured diseases, improved standards of living, fed and supported an exploding population, democratized information sharing, and expanded our understanding of our planet and our universe. 

If like to see those trends continue.  If the past 500 years took us from constantly battling starvation to thinking that in-flight wifi is mundane, imagine what 500 more could do.  Religion stands in the way of that progress, because it teaches people to turn away from knowledge and truth in favor of ancient superstitions.  I'd prefer to celebrate those superstitions as cultural history, rather than facts.

It's the only way to move forward, as a species.

Science is on the right side of history, religion is not.  Religion will either adapt to be more secular, or it will be left behind.  It's already happening.  Look at the religious affiliation trends in the US and in Europe.  Those trends will only accelerate once a certain critical mass is attained. 

firewalker

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #358 on: September 14, 2015, 11:46:55 AM »
Starvation is still an issue, and religion is far from being the chief cause of that.

Gin1984

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #359 on: September 14, 2015, 11:48:22 AM »
You have a very high expectation of modern society, why is that?

Because I'm an aspirational optimist?

Science has given us so much, so fast.  It has cured diseases, improved standards of living, fed and supported an exploding population, democratized information sharing, and expanded our understanding of our planet and our universe. 

If like to see those trends continue.  If the past 500 years took us from constantly battling starvation to thinking that in-flight wifi is mundane, imagine what 500 more could do.  Religion stands in the way of that progress, because it teaches people to turn away from knowledge and truth in favor of ancient superstitions.  I'd prefer to celebrate those superstitions as cultural history, rather than facts.

It's the only way to move forward, as a species.
Yes science has but we are talking about society as a whole.  Where we have but "evolution is just a theory" and so forth and that person having no desire to learn that a scientific theory and common vernacular theory are different.  As a society we average a sixth grade science education.  This is the society you think take the message without the mythos?

sol

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #360 on: September 14, 2015, 12:06:23 PM »
Starvation is still an issue, and religion is far from being the chief cause of that.

I said that science is the solution, not that religion is the problem.  At least not on this issue.

And it's not even the particular ills that religion has given us (some of which I detailed above) that are the biggest obstacle to progress, though they are real and tangible steps backwards.  The bigger problem is that supernatural religion teaches people to believe in the supernatural, to accept the unknown as unknowable, to stop searching for truth in favor of respecting entrenched power structures, and to rely on magic as a valid explanation for things. 

Imagine a homicide detective is investigating your spouse's murder, and his report says "victim was stricken by a voodoo curse and the magic was too strong, death unavoidable."  Would you accept that analysis?  How would you feel if you had cancer and your doctor died, and your new doctor told you cancer wasn't real and you needed to use crystals to rebalance your auras?  Sound good?  These are supernatural religious beliefs and they have no place in modern society.  They are holding everyone back.  They cause real harm.  They are evil.  The detective and the doctor need to use science, not religion, to find the right answers to these problems just like society as a whole needs to use science, not religion, to find the right answers about everything.
« Last Edit: September 14, 2015, 12:32:19 PM by sol »

Gin1984

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #361 on: September 14, 2015, 12:25:51 PM »
Starvation is still an issue, and religion is far from being the chief cause of that.

I said that science is the solution, not that religion is the problem.  At least not on this issue.

And it's not even the particular ills that religion has given us (some of which I detailed above) that are the biggest obstacle to progress, though they are real and tangible steps backwards.  The bigger problem is that supernatural religion teaches people to believe in the supernatural, to accept the unknown as unknowable, to stop searching for truth in favor of respecting entrenched power structures, and to rely on magic as a valid explanation for things. 

Imagine s homicide detective is investigating your spouse's murder, and his report says "victim was stricken by a voodoo curse and the magic was to strong, death unavoidable."  Would you accept that analysis?  How would you feel if you had cancer and your doctor died, and your new doctor told you cancer wasn't real and you needed to use crystals to rebalance your auras?  Sound good?  These are supernatural religious beliefs and they have no place in modern society.  They are holding everyone back.  They cause real harm.  They are evil.  The detective and the doctor need to use science, not religion, to find the right answers to these problems just like society as a whole needs to use science, not religion, to find the right answers about everything.
You might find this interesting based on your above description: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1744388110000265

forummm

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #362 on: September 14, 2015, 04:56:37 PM »
It's only watered-down children's stories or pop culture that came up with the mythological stories of the entire globe being flooded.

I use this as just one example of how false, straw-man arguments are being used to portray religious belief as obviously untrue and disproved by science.

Bullshit. I was raised in a church that still sincerely believes that the entire world was flooded in recent history. There are still many, many Christians who believe that every word of the Old Testament is to be taken literally. My Dad, my grandparents, and two of my three siblings are included among them. For instance, take a gander at this website if you have the stomach for it: http://www.grandcanyonflood.com/. I've heard this shit preached from a pulpit, at a loud volume, to a chorus of amens.
Agreed. I have never once heard any Christian or pastor say that it only means the local area was flooded, and have heard the exact opposite many times. And the local flood doesn't make any sense. Why would an ark be needed? Why couldn't Noah just go to wherever wasn't flooded? And why did all the animals in the world need to be saved? Why couldn't they just also walk to wherever wasn't flooded? God was making them walk down to the big (and apparently unnecessary) boat anyway--why not walk to safety?

firewalker

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #363 on: September 14, 2015, 05:45:44 PM »
"NOAH! I want you to build a U Haul!" hmmm, loses some of the drama.

brooklynguy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #364 on: September 14, 2015, 10:06:21 PM »
...just like society as a whole needs to use science, not religion, to find the right answers about everything.

For the benefit of any literal-minded readers not paying close enough attention to what sol has actually been saying, I would append "about the physical world" to the end of this sentence.  Science is the single best approach we have for obtaining knowledge, but it's not sufficient for developing wisdom.  For that, we need what can best be described as spirituality, which is ultimately a secular concept, but also a function servable (nonexclusively) by the non-supernatural aspects of religion.  No source I've ever come across articulates this truth as well as the WBW two-part series on religion I linked to upthread.  In the words of that post:

Quote from: Wait But Why
Ever since the human species began opening its eyes into consciousness, it has been an aggressively curious child, hungry to figure it all out. What was this world it was living in, and what did it all mean?

The first part of that question—What was this world?—became the job of science. The second part—What does it all mean?—is the job of spirituality.

Science is what we know, and spirituality is how we coexist philosophically, psychologically and emotionally with that knowledge. Science gives us the information; spirituality helps us wrap our heads around it. The two lead us as a tag team, each taking care of their critical halves of the “figuring it all out” puzzle—when science tells us something shocking, like “The Earth is revolving around the sun and not vice versa!” we turn, wide-eyed, to spirituality and ask, “How does that change things? How does that transform the way we should think about ourselves, about the world, and about life?”

Under this definition, spirituality is a secular concept, and the idea that spirituality and science are diametrically opposed to each other is incorrect—they’re two halves of the same quest.

Rosy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #365 on: September 14, 2015, 10:19:02 PM »
I agree with Sol's statement - religion stands in the way of progress. It is time to open our minds and move on.

Noah's ark, well, doesn't mean there was no great flood, of course there was. I'm sure many of the stories in the bible are true, just not exactly in the context that they are portrayed in the bible.


Cathy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #366 on: September 14, 2015, 10:56:19 PM »
For the benefit of any literal-minded readers not paying close enough attention to what sol has actually been saying, I would append "about the physical world" to the end of this sentence.  Science is the single best approach we have for obtaining knowledge, but it's not sufficient for developing wisdom....

I'm not sure what you think exists beyond the physical world. Personally, I take solace in the knowledge that this world is all there is, that there is nothing else, and that there is no meaning imposed onto us by the universe. There is no "true meaning" to divine. This means that we can construct our own meaning in life. Each person can select a meaning that best fits what they hope to achieve, whether that meaning is as simple and tranquil as being a father and husband, as transformative as ending global poverty, or as fundamentally world-changing as beating death itself by stopping human ageing and allowing each of us to live forever. (I once had a friend who maintained that he would never die, because he would be the one to conquer death; and that was his meaning in life.)

To me, there is no value in attempting to "figure out what it means" that the Earth revolves around the Sun, because it doesn't mean anything. It's also not a fact about the physical world in the first place, because it's possible to construct mathematically equivalent models where the Sun revolves around the Earth, although they are a lot more complicated than the pre-Galilean scheme. The heliocentric model is like the concept of an "electric field" -- it's a notion we introduce to make it easier to reason about the math, but it's not something with an essential ontological basis. In truth, there are no fields, no forces, no waves, and no particles -- these are all abstractions over the math, but all that really exists is the math itself. Indeed, this is basically the idea behind the "instrumentalist" approach to quantum mechanics, where the math alone is taken to be the extent of physics, and no further meaning is assigned.

Attempting to divine meaning where there is none just misses the chance to make the best of our own human lives. This is the only world, and we only get one chance to live in it. We should set our own human goals and objectives based on nothing more than what we want to achieve in life, without wasting time mulling over which of the infinitely many mathematically equivalent models best describes physics and what the "meaning" of that model is.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2015, 01:13:00 AM by Cathy »

regulator

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #367 on: September 14, 2015, 10:58:58 PM »
I can't believe this silly thread is still going.

Annamal

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #368 on: September 14, 2015, 11:33:49 PM »
Attempting to divine meaning where there is none just misses the chance to make the best of our own human lives. This is the only world, and we only get one chance to live in it. We should set our own human goals and objectives based on nothing more than what we want to achieve in life, without wasting time mulling over which of the infinitely many mathematically equivalent models best describes physics and what the "meaning" of that model is.

HI Cathy, are you a Terry Pratchett fan? (I only ask because there's a youtube series of videos where someone reads Discworld books for the first time and this dude is mid-way through Small Gods and reminding me how much I love it as a book and sort of as a philosophical examination of religion and society).

Here and now we are alive...

brooklynguy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #369 on: September 15, 2015, 05:53:52 AM »
I'm not sure what you think exists beyond the physical world.

I think nothing exists beyond the physical world, and the qualification I placed on sol's statement about science's question-answering utility was not intended to suggest otherwise.  Science should indeed be used to find the right answers about everything that literally exists, but without that limitation I worried that a literal-minded reader could take that statement to mean more than it does.  Questions of mathematics, economics, philosophy, art, and countless other subjects are unanswerable by science because they are beyond science's scope.  Yet many such questions nonetheless have objectively determinable "right" answers.  For example, "what is two plus two?" or "what conclusion follows from the premises 'if p then q' and 'p'?"

As far as the "existence" of meaning in the universe, we may be using different definitions of the word "meaning."  I believe life has meaning, which does not mean I believe that some objective external "true meaning" exists out there for us to divine.  As you said, we're each free to select our own.

It's funny how which side of this debate I find myself on may appear to be shifting depending on who I'm talking to.

firewalker

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #370 on: September 15, 2015, 06:33:31 AM »
Science has it's limits. While it progresses in food production, preservation and shipping, it cannot remove greed, craving for power and nationalism. So, no matter how science has improved matters of food production, millions are hungry. So it is with many other benefits of science. It is a great tool, but a hammer will never build a house on it's own power.

Cathy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #371 on: September 15, 2015, 09:19:26 AM »
To me, there is no value in attempting to "figure out what it means" that the Earth revolves around the Sun, because it doesn't mean anything. It's also not a fact about the physical world in the first place, because it's possible to construct mathematically equivalent models where the Sun revolves around the Earth, although they are a lot more complicated than the pre-Galilean scheme.

To elaborate on this, whenever one object can be said to revolve around another, there is no truth about which one is inside the orbit of the other. It can be viewed either way. From here on Earth, it appears that the Sun revolves around us, and there's nothing "wrong" with that model. It can be used for all interplanetary science and returns exactly the same results as any other frame of reference. The only difference is that using a geocentric model results in the work being a lot more complicated, although the results are ultimately equivalent. This is actually the same with many things in science. The concepts that we take as being "real" are just chosen to make the math simpler, but there are infinitely many alternative ways of modelling the same thing and getting the same results even though the model is very different.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2015, 09:22:45 AM by Cathy »

brooklynguy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #372 on: September 15, 2015, 09:38:00 AM »
This is actually the same with many things in science.

Not just science, but everything.  Relativity is always worth keeping in mind.  So much of what we argue about in this forum boils down to differences in points of reference rather than in substance.  One side vehemently insists that a zebra is a white horse with black stripes while the other just as vehemently insists it's actually the other way around, and neither side realizes that both are equally correct.

forummm

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #373 on: September 15, 2015, 10:09:51 AM »
This is actually the same with many things in science.

Not just science, but everything.  Relativity is always worth keeping in mind.  So much of what we argue about in this forum boils down to differences in points of reference rather than in substance.  One side vehemently insists that a zebra is a white horse with black stripes while the other just as vehemently insists it's actually the other way around, and neither side realizes that both are equally correct.
Interspersed with the people who insist the zebra doesn't exist, etc.

sol

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #374 on: September 15, 2015, 11:21:56 AM »
Not just science, but everything.  Relativity is always worth keeping in mind.  So much of what we argue about in this forum boils down to differences in points of reference rather than in substance.  One side vehemently insists that a zebra is a white horse with black stripes while the other just as vehemently insists it's actually the other way around, and neither side realizes that both are equally correct.

You're equivocating.  Supernatural magical religion is not "equally correct."  The literal and figurative interpretations of Noah's flood are not equally correct. The book of genesis is not equally correct as your introductory geology textbook. In some cases, on some issues, religion is wrong.

On others, like your claim about wisdom, I might reserve judgement only because it is less clear what criteria can be used to determine what is correct.   Lazarus Long said "if it can't be expressed in figures, it is not science, it's opinion" to illustrate this point.  Facts can be measured with numbers, everything else is fuzzy wuzzy maybes.

Science has it's limits. While it progresses in food production, preservation and shipping, it cannot remove greed, craving for power and nationalism. So, no matter how science has improved matters of food production, millions are hungry. So it is with many other benefits of science. It is a great tool, but a hammer will never build a house on it's own power.

In the context of this thread, can you suggest any alternative tool for solving those kinds of problems?  Surely magic is not the preferred solution to world hunger.

I concede that science is not the perfect tool for every problem.  I would argue it is still the best tool available to us.

brooklynguy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #375 on: September 15, 2015, 11:50:58 AM »
Supernatural magical religion is not "equally correct."  The literal and figurative interpretations of Noah's flood are not equally correct. The book of genesis is not equally correct as your introductory geology textbook. In some cases, on some issues, religion is wrong.

I agree, as I thought my posts in this thread have made clear.  My point was not that literally everything is relative, but simply that Cathy's point that "many things in science" are relative has application to every area outside the realm of science too (that is, "many things" in every area are relative).  Her description of the correctness or incorrectness of the literal centricity of one object in spatial relation to another being dependent on the perspective of the observer was too good a metaphor to pass up for many of the debates we have in this forum that ultimately boil down to semantics.  But not all of them do.

Supernatural magical religion is not correct, it is incorrect.  Period.  As you said, the entire globe was either flooded or it wasn't (and it wasn't).  Both can't be true simultaneously.

But, for example, on the question of whether life has meaning, you, me and Cathy all served up answers in this thread which, on their face, may appear to differ, but which, I would argue, are actually all substantively the same.

Faraday

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #376 on: September 15, 2015, 08:22:19 PM »
To me, there is no value in attempting to "figure out what it means" that the Earth revolves around the Sun, because it doesn't mean anything. It's also not a fact about the physical world in the first place, because it's possible to construct mathematically equivalent models where the Sun revolves around the Earth, although they are a lot more complicated than the pre-Galilean scheme.

To elaborate on this, whenever one object can be said to revolve around another, there is no truth about which one is inside the orbit of the other. It can be viewed either way. From here on Earth, it appears that the Sun revolves around us, and there's nothing "wrong" with that model. It can be used for all interplanetary science and returns exactly the same results as any other frame of reference. The only difference is that using a geocentric model results in the work being a lot more complicated, although the results are ultimately equivalent. This is actually the same with many things in science. The concepts that we take as being "real" are just chosen to make the math simpler, but there are infinitely many alternative ways of modelling the same thing and getting the same results even though the model is very different.

Disagreed. Here's why:
http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

"Copernicus switched from an earth-centered planetary system to a sun-centered one. In doing so, he switched from something that was obvious to something that was apparently ridiculous. However, it was a matter of finding better ways of calculating the motion of the planets in the sky, and eventually the geocentric theory was just left behind. It was precisely because the old theory gave results that were fairly good by the measurement standards of the time that kept it in being so long."

Asimov da man. (drops mic)
« Last Edit: September 15, 2015, 08:31:25 PM by mefla »

Cathy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #377 on: September 15, 2015, 08:45:07 PM »
Disagreed. Here's why:
http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

"Copernicus switched from an earth-centered planetary system to a sun-centered one. In doing so, he switched from something that was obvious to something that was apparently ridiculous. However, it was a matter of finding better ways of calculating the motion of the planets in the sky, and eventually the geocentric theory was just left behind. It was precisely because the old theory gave results that were fairly good by the measurement standards of the time that kept it in being so long."

Asimov da man. (drops mic)

mefla, it's just a fact that you can construct a model of the solar system with Earth at the centre. It is mathematically equivalent to any other frame of reference. Such a model is very complicated because all of the non-Earth objects will undergo unnecessarily complex motions. As such, it's not all that useful for practical work, but it's definitely not wrong in any way. I'm not actually going to construct the model for you because, as mentioned, it is complicated to do. However, if you want to satisfy yourself that my claim is true, just consider something simpler than the actual solar system, e.g., a minimal system with only the Sun and Earth. It should be easy to convince yourself that either being the centre is mathematically equivalent.

To be clear, however, this obviously does not mean that Pope Urban VIII had it right with his particular geocentric model. In a mathematically correct geocentric model, the non-Earth objects will undergo very complicated motions -- they won't just be going around Earth in a circle or ellipse. The ecclesiastical position on the solar system was unquestionably wrong, but it's certainly possible to construct a model with Earth at the centre (it's just not the particular model advocated by the Church in days past).

Also, to address another point I just found while searching the internet: Some people claim that the laws of motion would "break down" in a geocentric model and therefore it is wrong. This is a highly misleading claim. A more accurate claim is that the laws of motion would have to be modified relative to how they are usually written because Earth is a non-inertial reference frame relative to the Sun. This does not mean geocentrism is wrong. It just means, again, that it is complicated.

If your point is just that the Earth does not make for a convenient reference point for certain kinds of science, I agree with that. I mentioned that in my posts above.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2015, 09:06:45 PM by Cathy »

smilla

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #378 on: September 15, 2015, 08:53:53 PM »
These are fairy tales, and while they were originally written to help illustrate the message, in modern society we should be able to see the message without all the fairy tale window dressing.

The problem here is that modern Christianity seems absolutely dependent on the magic parts, like you can't be saved unless you confess your belief in the supernatural, which I think undermines the valuable parts.

You are correct. Christianity, modern and ancient, is absolutely dependent on the magic parts.  There is no message without the fairy tale. The fairy tale is the message - a crazy, incredible, magical, gospel story. 

I am a Christian and pro-science. Although I understand why rationalists might find those things mutually exclusive, I am a little bewildered by Christians who do.

Cathy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #379 on: September 15, 2015, 09:15:43 PM »
No, no, a thousand fucks no. Didn't you even READ my citation? Do you not know who the hell Isaac Asimov is/was?

I don't want you to "construct a model". You are not impressing me with the added "e".

It's trivial that "you can construct a model of the solar system with Earth at the centre".
Where I disagree is: "It is mathematically equivalent to any other frame of reference" and " it's definitely not wrong in any way"
You don't get to sit here on this goddammed forum and simply say that Copernicus, then Galileo, were full of shit.
(And don't get me started about Galileo. I'm still mad at the church over that one.)

At one time, people were, in fact, put to death over your precious earth-centric theory. There's a lot to this discussion you are just smudging away. Maybe you are trying to say something else and you just picked foolish examples?

Asimov's (excellent) piece was all about precision and improvement in theory - a cornerstone of the scientific method. Science is all about precision and accuracy. All about reproducibility and applicability. Every time we can see and measure in greater and greater accuracy and precision, we learn more and more, we go further and further, and the benefits multiply.

Do you really think we could have gotten to the moon if we'd "modeled the moon some other way"? If you do, I wish you'd met my vector calculus professor, JMA Danby:

http://www.amazon.com/J.-Danby-MA/e/B001HCZERO/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

He is one of the personnel who worked on the celestial mechanics calculations for the Apollo missions to the moon. He worked to make the math do-able by the primitive computers of the time that were onboard the missions and on the ground.

You are equivocating precision - in both thought and measurement - out of the discussion. Stop that, stop that. Ni! Ni! Just flush the stupid heliocentric argument, OK? You are embarrassing yourself here.

And to think: JMA was one of your countrymen, if you are indeed in Great Britain. Oh GOD the humanity!

To answer your initial questions, (1) I read your citation, (2) I know who Asimov is, and (3) I have never claimed to be "in Great Britain" or to be British and I am neither. Your citation does not address my claim.

Unlike many of my recent posts, this particular claim is not some subtle philosophical point. It's just a matter of physics that you can treat Earth as being the centre of the universe if you want to do that. However, as mentioned, the math behind it is complicated and the laws of motion that would apply are not the normal classical mechanics laws of motion as formulated for inertial reference frames because the reference point of Earth is non-inertial with respect to the Sun (and with respect to every other mass in the universe).

There is nothing "stupid" about the argument I am making here. It is entirely correct. As mentioned, the actual solar system has many bodies so it's complicated to show you the math for the real solar system, but if you want, and if I have time, I could work up an example for a simpler system to help you understand (say, involving just two bodies).
« Last Edit: September 15, 2015, 09:35:50 PM by Cathy »

Cathy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #380 on: September 15, 2015, 10:10:23 PM »
mefla, I don't have time to make any fancy math examples tonight, but here's a simple and yet rigorous way of understanding what I am saying.

Let's consider a purely two-dimensional model of the solar system where all the planets are circular masses.

First, let's consider the reference frame of "the background stars" (otherwise known as "the rest of the universe"). In this reference frame, all of the planets would appear to revolve around the Sun. We will set the origin of the 2D coördinate system to be the centre of the Sun. In the background frame, the position of the centre of Earth at time t is given by E_x(t) and E_y(t). Now we're going to introduce a new reference frame. The new reference frame ("geoframe") has a coördinate system (x′, y′) that defined by the following change of coördinates relative to the background frame at time t:

x′(x, t) ← x - E_x(t)
y′(y, t) ← y - E_y(t)

By inspection, we can see that the background frame coördinates (E_x(t), E_y(t)) always transform into geoframe coördinates of (0, 0). In other words, this system has been specifically constructed to have the centre of Earth be at the origin of the coördinate system, i.e. the centre of the universe. My change of coördinates tells you exactly how the motion of every other object works in the geoframe. First, you work it out for the background frame at time t; then you simply apply the change of coördinates and you know how it looks in the geoframe. This proves that you can treat Earth as the centre of the universe without any problems of physics or math.

Now, one point you will observe is that my change of coördinates is definitely not a Galilean transformation. That means that the laws of physics take on a different classical form in the geoframe compared to the background frame. That is expected though. It doesn't mean the model is wrong; it just means it is different, as described above.

By the way, none of this is novel. Einstein pointed out that both geocentrism and heliocentrism are correct at page 212 of The Evolution of Physics (1938), saying that "the struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus" was "quite meaningless". I am sure Einstein was not the first to point this out since it is rather obvious, but he's a well-known name and you appear to want an appeal to authority.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2015, 08:36:18 PM by Cathy »

Faraday

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #381 on: September 15, 2015, 10:47:24 PM »
mefla, I don't have time to make any fancy math examples tonight, but here's a simple and yet rigorous way of understanding what I am saying.

Let's consider a purely two-dimensional model of the solar system where all the planets are circular masses.

First, let's consider the reference frame of "the background stars" (otherwise known as "the rest of the universe"). In this reference frame, all of the planets would appear to revolve around the Sun. We will set the origin of the 2D coördinate system to be the centre of the Sun. In the background frame, the position of the centre of Earth at time t is given by E_x(t) and E_y(t). Now we're going to introduce a new reference frame. The new reference frame ("geoframe") has a coördinate system (x′, y′) that defined by the following change of coördinates relative to the background frame at time t:

x′(x, t) ← x - E_x(t)
y′(y, t) ← y - E_y(t)

By inspection, we can see that the background frame coördinates (E_x(t), E_y(t)) always transform into geoframe coördinates of (0, 0). In other words, this system has been specifically constructed to have the centre of Earth be at the origin of the coördinate system, i.e. the centre of the universe. My change of coördinates tells you exactly how the motion of every other object works in the geoframe. First, you work it out for the background frame at time t; then you simply apply the change of coördinates and you know how it looks in the geoframe. This proves that you can treat Earth as the centre of the universe without any problems of physics or math.

Now, one point you will observe is that my change of coördinates is definitely not a Galilean transformation. That means that the laws of physics take on a different form in the geoframe compared to the background frame. That is expected though. It doesn't mean the model is wrong; it just means it is different, as described above.

Quote
saying that "the struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus" was "quite meaningless". I am sure Einstein was not the first to point this out since it is rather obvious, but he's a well-known name and you appear to want an appeal to authority.

He's talking about the fact that early astronomy and astrology were mixed. The argument was between the church and science at the time, which is essentially descriptive of the way this entire thread went: arguments between belief and science ARE typically quite meaningless, just like THIS discussion is....

When we start using Ptolemy's maps for navigation, then you'll convince me. Otherwise, your words are meaningless to me.

Besides: I don't WANT you to do this, your statement is wrong, simple as that.

Defective science is not equal to good science, in ANY coordinate system.
(Superflouous umlauts? Do you speak in a fake English accent too?)

I've pared down my responses and I will soon delete this one.
I was never here. This is not the logic you seek.....
« Last Edit: September 15, 2015, 10:52:05 PM by mefla »

Cathy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #382 on: September 15, 2015, 10:51:40 PM »
This is a trivial coordinate transform...

...your statement is wrong, simple as that.

Defective science is not equal to good science, in ANY coordinate system...

...Superflouous umlauts?...

Yes, the change of coördinates is trivial. The argument I am making is a trivially correct one, which is why your opposition to it is strange. The triviality of the argument makes it easy to see that there is nothing wrong in what I said (or in what Einstein said, who was talking about this exact change of coördinates).

The diacritic mark in "coördinate" is not an umlaut; it is a diaeresis. The use of this diacritic in English is not exactly ubiquitous, but it's not rare either. User brooklynguy has also been known to indulge in its use (e.g. in "naïve").
« Last Edit: September 15, 2015, 11:05:07 PM by Cathy »

Faraday

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #383 on: September 15, 2015, 11:06:58 PM »
This is a trivial coordinate transform...

Yes, it is trivial. The argument I am making is a trivially correct one, which is why your opposition to it is strange.

You didn't even choose the correct coordinate systems to transform between. Movement within cartesian systems IS trival because it's not fully characterizing the systems under study. Your "transformation" does not express phi equivalently between the two systems.

Then, there is the "mars problem" that the geocentric model cannot explain:

http://www.universetoday.com/36487/difference-between-geocentric-and-heliocentric/

Quote
But by the fifteen and sixteenth centuries, astronomers in Europe were facing other problems, the project added. Eclipse tables were becoming inaccurate, sailors needed to keep track of their position when sailing out of sight of land (which led to a new method to measure longitude, based partly on accurate timepieces), and the calendar dating from the time of Julius Caesar (44 BCE) no longer was accurate in describing the equinox — a problem for officials concerned with the timing of religious holidays, primarily Easter. (The timing problem was later solved by resetting the calendar and instituting more scientifically rigorous leap years.)

Even more importantly:

Quote
To send a satellite from Earth to Mars, a rocket must accelerate the satellite until it is in an elliptical orbit around the sun. The satellite does not travel to Mars under rocket power, because there isn’t enough fuel. It just moves in the Keplerian orbit under the influence of the sun’s gravity.

Why would anyone in their right mind do the transforms from a geocentric model to do this work?

See, what I've been trying to say is that your perspective on science is flawed. Your claim of an equivalence between "old science" and "new science" that just doesn't exist.

Come to think of it, I've never in my life heard ANYONE make the claim you're making. That should have served as a warning to me in the first place that I'm flushing time down the töilette.
« Last Edit: September 15, 2015, 11:13:39 PM by mefla »

Cathy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #384 on: September 16, 2015, 12:52:55 AM »
You didn't even choose the correct coordinate systems to transform between. Movement within cartesian systems IS trival because it's not fully characterizing the systems under study. Your "transformation" does not express phi equivalently between the two systems.

It is very difficult to decipher what you mean by this attempted criticism. Nonetheless, I have reflected on it very carefully in case I am missing something. Despite the reflection, I have reached the conclusion that my argument is sound.

As far as I can tell, your attempted criticism is meant to suggest that (classically speaking) Newton's laws of motion would not work in my new coördinate system because my transform does not preserve the necessary classical invariants compared to the background frame. That is completely correct, but also irrelevant. You just have to derive new laws of motion by using the definition of the transformation.

Your reference to "phi" is unexplained but ϕ is often used to denote angles, so I could also interpret your attempted crticism as suggesting that you think there should be some rotational transformation involved in my argument. This is not necessary for my argument, although you could do it if you wanted. In fact, you could use any kind of crazy coördinate transform that you might dream up. Any one will work, but the laws of motion will have to be written differently depending on which transform is chosen.

I leave it as an exercise to write down the form of the classical laws of motion that would apply under my transform.


...Then, there is the "mars problem" that the geocentric model cannot explain:

http://www.universetoday.com/36487/difference-between-geocentric-and-heliocentric/

This is a problem with the traditional religious geocentrism, but not with the geocentrism described in my posts.


Even more importantly:...
Why would anyone in their right mind do the transforms from a geocentric model to do this work?

Here you have hit upon the real reason that the heliocentric model is classically preferred. Under classical mechanics, the laws of physics take on the same form in all inertial frames of reference but not in a non-inertial frame of reference. In a non-inertial frame, one has to derive different laws of physics.

Thus, it's much simpler to choose our reference frame as an inertial frame because then the laws of physics will be written the same in all other inertial frames. The heliocentric frame is technically not inertial (because the rest of the universe exists, after all), but it's approximately inertial. This means that, under classical mechanics, there really is a sense in which it is "more true" to say that the Earth revolves around the Sun rather than vice versa: namely, choosing the Sun as the centre allows us to deal with planetary physics using the same laws of physics that apply in all inertial reference frames, whereas under my model, you need to use different laws of physics for planetary motion compared to the physics in an inertial frame!

However, this is nothing new. I pointed out in all my posts above that the heliocentric model is simpler and more useful. That was never in dispute.

I should note, however, that this theoretical advantage is unique to classical mechanics, and is not a property of the universe. The point of the Einstein quote I gave is that we could devise a system of physics where the laws are the same in all frames, even ones defined by crazy transforms. The fact that the heliocentric model has conceptual advantages is a consequence of the models we use, rather than a fact of nature.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2015, 09:19:16 AM by Cathy »

brooklynguy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #385 on: September 16, 2015, 05:38:08 AM »
User brooklynguy has also been known to indulge in its use (e.g. in "naïve").

In my street cred's defense, that was my phone's autocorrect feature's doing.  But I'm not the best example to use to make your case in any event, because mefla believes that I am a pizza boy who fancies himself an intellectual.

Kris

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #386 on: September 16, 2015, 06:25:33 AM »
http://usuncut.com/world/pope-francis-calls-for-ending-tax-exempt-status-of-churches-that-dont-help-the-needy/

A bit more back on topic, it looks like the Pope supports ending the tax-exempt status of churches that don't help the needy.

Faraday

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #387 on: September 16, 2015, 01:44:13 PM »
User brooklynguy has also been known to indulge in its use (e.g. in "naïve").

In my street cred's defense, that was my phone's autocorrect feature's doing.  But I'm not the best example to use to make your case in any event, because mefla believes that I am a pizza boy who fancies himself an intellectual.

I thought we reached some kind of understanding. You edited/backed off, I edited/backed off....I was hoping for a free pizza someday.

Nevertheless, the stock market is blowing me "math kisses" right now anyway so I'm feelin pretty good...I've been meaning to go back to the Poo Flinging thread and see what's what....

*sigh*....Cathy wasn't kicking me in my jesus back then. I miss those times.
« Last Edit: September 16, 2015, 01:48:11 PM by mefla »

brooklynguy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #388 on: September 16, 2015, 02:22:13 PM »
I thought we reached some kind of understanding. You edited/backed off, I edited/backed off....I was hoping for a free pizza someday.

Didn't mean to reopen old wounds, but you've got to admit it's funny that, in response to your criticism of her, Cathy happened to appeal to my use of language as evidence of its non-pompousness, in light of your previously-stated opinion of my posts.

For the record, though, I never did (and never do) edit my posts, except in rare cases in which I always clearly identify the edits.  It's a pet peeve of mine when heavy after-the-fact editing destroys a thread's sense of flow (as your wanton editing and deleting of posts in this thread have done).

Quote
Nevertheless, the stock market is blowing me "math kisses" right now anyway...so I've been meaning to go back to the Poo Flinging thread and see what's what....

While you're at it, you may want to reread Cathy's posts in this thread before you fly off the handle again, because you seem to be arguing against claims she didn't make :)

firewalker

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #389 on: September 16, 2015, 06:32:46 PM »
I like zebras.

forummm

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #390 on: September 16, 2015, 07:31:20 PM »
I like zebras.
They're just unicorns with the horn sawed off and painted funky.

MrsPete

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #391 on: September 16, 2015, 08:25:27 PM »
With civility and respect, generally speaking.  Please relay that message to the person who called me a profane bigot earlier in this thread.  In the spirit of Jesus. 
Nah.  Thing is, you can't swoop in and throw mud first ... and then complain that someone called you on being a mudslinger. 
With that said, this was a thread about dishonest people who lie about religion in order to defraud people.  Any time you convince someone to part with their last dollar by lying to them, whether it is about healthy cigarettes or talking snakes, other civic-minded folks might try to protect that potential victim from being taken advantage of.  I am not trampling anyone's rights by highlighting the lie.  I am not bullying anyone by trying to protect the victim of a scam.
I'm in no way defending the concept of prosperity gospel, which is not at all biblical.  I'm not at all defending the dishonest people who swindle using God's name -- and, yes, they're very real, and they give a bad name to other Christians. 
You can continue to call me rude names all you like, I still won't reciprocate. You and I are both free to contribute to this thread, and I would welcome your thoughts on why you think your faith is somehow different from magic, on why religions should be held to a different standard of fraud than other ideas, or why you think the prosperity gospel is not a scam.
No thank you.  I suspect you really want to argue, and I'm just not interested. 

If you're really interested in the Christian faith, I suggest you get a good study Bible and read it -- start with the New Testament; I personally like the NIV version -- it's an easier read than the King James, but unlike the newer over-the-top-in-their-attempt to modernize the wording.  For example, The Message version of the Bible makes me think about -- oh, what is that comedian's name? -- in his 1970s patchwork suit proclaiming, "I'm a wild a craaazy guy!"  Anyway, when I sat down to genuinely study the Bible about two decades ago I was surprised at just how much the message of the Bible has been twisted in today's modern society.  Don't read looking to disprove -- read to learn, distinguish between poetry and prose.  A good study Bible will include sidebars about historical facts and wording, which is quite interesting.  You'll be surprised at what's there.  I also suggest a Biblical commentary such as Matthew Henry's; it helps to understand the culture in which the Bible was written, which is somewhat foreign to us today.  Another good side-by-side reading selection is the early historian Josephus. 
Are we expected to respect a religion that calls for the murder of non-believers (radical Islam)?  Should I play nice and be respectful of a religion than denies an ill child needed medical care (Christian Science, Jehovah's Witnesses)?   Is it proper to be polite and respectful to a major church that facilitated and covered up the sexual abuse of generations of innocent children (Catholic church)?  Would you take offense at someone for being critical of Jim Jone's Peoples Temple or Heavens Gate?

Nonsense is nonsense.   If there is one single christian god why are there thousands of disparate christian sects and denominations?  If there is one supreme creator who is the same yesterday today and forever, why does religion constantly morph into new forms and revise its doctrines?  The answer is obvious, religion is completely man made.  It is folklore that evolved to take advantage of and exploit the masses ...
Beliefs are one thing, actions are another.  You have no right to question a believer's faith in Islam, but you'd be correct to denounce him killing innocent people. 

If you study religious beliefs of various sects and denominations, you'll find more overlap than disparities.  Don't get too caught up in debates over Transubstantiation or infant baptism; that type of thing is trivial in comparison to the big message of the Bible. 
One of the major criticisms off Christianity, and religion in general, has been that God has always been defined by the unknown.  Sunrises were a miracle of God, until they weren't anymore.  Human conception was a miracle of God, until it wasn't anymore.  The cosmos was a miracle of God... you get the idea.
See, this is the kind of thing that people who aren't well-versed in the Bible and in the concepts of Christianity THINK Christianity is about ...  but if you read the actual Bible, you'll find ... well, you won't believe it anyway, but you'll find a whole lot less of this type of thing than you think.  For example, the Bible speaks of handling money wisely (and dealing fairly with your fellow man in terms of finances) more often than it speaks of heaven or hell.  And most people on this board would agree with the conservative, savings-oriented advice found in the Bible. 
The other problem with playing the "it is beyond our understanding" card is that it is essentially a cop out for evading the difficult questions that expose religion as fantasy.
Disagree.  I can think of any number of things -- both Biblical concepts and worldly knowledge -- that were "beyond my understanding" when I was younger ... but now that I'm older and hopefully a bit wiser, they make sense to me.  To give an example, I remember reading as a child that God will punish the children of a sinner for his transgressions -- and I couldn't understand why I should be held accountable for my parents' foibles.  Today as an adult I understand that concept:  It's not outright punishment so much as the idea that when you do wrong, you subject your children to the consequences of your choices -- believe me, as the child of an alcoholic, I understand perfectly how my father's bad choices have influenced my life.  But I didn't "get that" when I was younger.  Why should I not expect to continue to grow in my understanding and understand later?   Likewise, to give a worldly example, I've never been tops in Chemistry -- does that mean that someone else can't understand the complicated intricacies of that field? 
It is the bible that proclaims that god loves us and wants to save us.  It is the bible that claims that miracles serve to enhance faith.  It is the bible that claims if two people pray for the same thing it will be granted.  In other words, your faith begins by making many clearly defined assertions.  Then when we ask reasonable questions your faith retreats into the stance of "it is beyond our understanding".  How can this be when so many of the other tenets of Christianity are so plainly spelled out?
Eh, I suggest you read some more.  The Bible gives examples of people who were rejected by God for various reasons -- and I believe I said earlier that this thread gives me a bit of insight into Calvinism.  The bible says that when two or more are gathered, God is in their midst -- NOT that He will act as a vending machine and serve up whatever they've requested.  Also, the answer to a prayer is sometimes NO.

These are the kind of things that people mistakenly THINK are Biblical. 
I could claim that the Greek gods are real and that we should worship them.  I could claim that the the very existence of modern Greece proves that Greek fables are true.
So you're arguing that because these stories have fallen by the wayside that a completely different belief system, which has endured the test of time, must be false? 
The Bible is full of errors, contradictions, and alterations from the original text. Read any of Bart Ehrman's books. There's a lot of stuff that you can learn in seminary that makes it clear that the version of the Bible we have today is not the same as the version they had back in the day, and that it wasn't written by the people that churches commonly claim. Strangely the churches won't tell you that stuff though. If they will lie to you about the Bible, you really can't trust a word they say.
Are you sure churches are all involved in a big conspiracy?  I seem to remember learning about the Council of Nicaea, Tyndale, the council that approved the 66 books for the Protestant Bible, Martin Luther, and a whole lot of other things as a teenager in Confirmation class.  When I took a Biblical history class in college, nothing I'd learned about the history of these documents in church was refuted.  Now, if you want to argue that all too many Christians are ignorant about exactly how what we today call The Bible came to exist in its present format, I'll agree with you. 

Personally, I'm always fascinated when our pastor discusses the evolution of a certain word or phrase in the bible, and often he gives multiple possibilities about what it may've meant then /now.  Doesn't feel like a cover-up. 
I would call myself a scientific atheist,
On the other hand, I've heard my Sunday School teacher say that as he was earning his medical degree, the more he learned about anatomy of the human body, the deeper his faith became.  He says that the human body is so intricately designed that he couldn't imagine it being accidental.  Two different reactions to scientific study.
And now to return finally to the actual topic:

For those people on the forum who know people who subscribe to the prosperity gospel thing...do you have any idea why they do so? From an emotional and sociological perspective, do they talk about why/what it gives them? Do they think it's actually biblical (I understand it COULD be interpreted that way if prosperity is kept sort of vague). I'm truly interested, because as I've said several times, I think religious faith actually does have some positive elements in many cases and this is one where I wonder if I'm missing some huge benefit for the believers...
Obviously I'm guessing about the prosperity preachers' (Joel Olsteen, for example) motivation ... but I suspect they persist in their line of preaching because people respond positively to it -- I mean, isn't it nice to hear, "You WILL prosper financially!  You can't lose!"  All too many people are willing to simply listen to this without reading for themselves and learning that it is not accurate according to the Bible.  Even if you adhere to the idea of mistakes and errors, the idea that EVERY Christian will succeed financially just can't be defended.  Also, these guys tend to share characteristics with successful politicians:  They're attractive, they speak well, and they have charisma.  I also think these mega-churches provide some social clout for those who are attracted to such things.

And with that return to the original question, I'm not up to reading the pages and pages of this thread that remain.  Those of you who don't believe aren't going to change your minds -- and that's your right.  Just don't belittle those who do.  Regardless of your beliefs, it's unkind -- and since most of you seem to be secular humanists at heart, believing in your own intellect and thinking yourself too wise to fall for such old-fashioned lies, it's beneath you to ridicule other people's strongly held faith. 

Jack

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #392 on: September 16, 2015, 08:36:02 PM »
OP checking in. Man, I have no idea what you people are even yammering about anymore!

Let me know if you ever get back on-topic. : /

brooklynguy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #393 on: September 17, 2015, 08:07:55 AM »
OP checking in. Man, I have no idea what you people are even yammering about anymore!

Let me know if you ever get back on-topic. : /

As sol said earlier, the topic has expanded to "how to find truth."  For my money, this thread has become one of the most interesting and valuable in recent memory, so it would be counterproductive to attempt to rein in the discussion back to the narrower original topic.

I'm not up to reading the pages and pages of this thread that remain.

Then you are doing yourself a disservice.  Each of your concerns has been adequately addressed several times over during the course of the thread, so I won't repeat those responses now, other than to reiterate that you should not equate the challenging of ideas with the belittling of people.  If everyone respected the taboo of challenging other people's strongly held beliefs, this website would not exist.

wenchsenior

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #394 on: September 17, 2015, 08:29:17 AM »

 -- and since most of you seem to be secular humanists at heart, believing in your own intellect and thinking yourself too wise to fall for such old-fashioned lies, it's beneath you to ridicule other people's strongly held faith.

Like I said upthread, it's like talking to a teflon wall. You are persisting in a strawman view of what most of us are arguing. The fact that you still think that we are rejecting the supernatural/magic/faith-based claims of religion because we believe ourselves to be paragons of intellect and wisdom just indicates you either haven't read or don't understand most of what's been argued.


Faraday

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #395 on: September 17, 2015, 12:03:25 PM »
Look: I wanna put this issue to bed and move on. So I'll try to close this topic without being insulting:

You didn't even choose the correct coordinate systems to transform between. Movement within cartesian systems IS trival because it's not fully characterizing the systems under study. Your "transformation" does not express phi equivalently between the two systems.

It is very difficult to decipher what you mean by this attempted criticism. Nonetheless, I have reflected on it very carefully in case I am missing something. Despite the reflection, I have reached the conclusion that my argument is sound.

What I mean is that your transformation must be between polar coordinate systems in order to allow the incorporation of the principle of conservation of angular momentum.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_coordinate_system

While you can easily express position in any instant of time in a cartesian coordinate system, there is no precise way to express angular momentum in a cartesian coordinate system.

The ONLY thing you can possibly be saying is that positionally, you can engage in trivial transformations that express planetary position both in a heliocentric or a geocentric model.

What I'm saying is that you've reduced both models to simple positional reporting, stripping away both the angular components as well as the mass and gravitational components of the models.

You're essentially saying "you can express the position of any body in the solar system w/reference to any other body of the solar system, in a cartesian coordinate system".

Fine. I have no beef with that, because that's almost a useless statement. It's certainly not applicable to astrophysics, it's only applicable to coordnate systems.

It is certainly not a full description of the heliocentric model nor the geocentric model.

The emergence of the heliocentric model (and the furor which delivered dire consequences to most men of science involved in the discussion) came about because we (humanity) realized that The Church's geocentric model MUST be wrong because:

- the geocentric model was conceived before, and without reference to, the discovery/characterization of gravity, the gravitational constant, and the principle of the conservation of momentum

- the earth would have to be supermassive, with gravitational field many times larger, to be the center of the solar system

- the sun would have to be super-small, with gravitational field many times smaller,

- observations of how sunlight strikes the moon and the other planets were inconsistent and unexplainable by the geocentric model

- the "mars problem" violates the principle of the conservation of momentum

And yet, men of science were pressured, under threat of death or imprisonment, to renounce their heliocentric observations on the basis of some bizarre, concocted notion having nothing to do with reality, namely the "central importance of man in the universe".

So, to say one model is just a translation of the other, is highly offensive to me. You are excusing that great first battle between the church and science as "a disagreement of convenience, not of substance".

Quote
As far as I can tell, your attempted criticism is meant to suggest that (classically speaking) Newton's laws of motion would not work in my new coördinate system because my transform does not preserve the necessary classical invariants compared to the background frame. That is completely correct, but also irrelevant. You just have to derive new laws of motion by using the definition of the transformation.

No. I am not suggesting this. I am going far beyond and telling you that the geocentric model is a dead end. There's nothing else to derive because the geocentric model yields incorrect math.

Think about the story of the transition from geocentric to heliocentric: Cathy, the church put Galileo under house arrest. Copernicus' works were considered heretical. There's even a claim that Kepler killed Tyco Brahe to get at his data.

Does this sound to you like a transition from one equivalent model to the other? Not at all. The change from the geocentric model to the heliocentric model birthed the entirely new science of Astrophysics, which was at-once made congruent and "complete" with the cutting edge discoveries of gravity as an inverse-square phenomena, the gravitational constant, mass, density, and the conservation of angular momentum.

What I'm telling you is that the geocentric model doesn't just require "deriving a new law of motion". What I'm telling you is that any new law of motion one COULD derive from it is no law at all, but just a nonsense equation that wold have to change for every other individual planet.

Instead of a universally applicable "law of motion", you would instead have a new "description of motion" that was unique to every planet and every observed rotational phenomena, which would then be different from observed angular momentum on earth.

What I'm saying is that the geocentric model fundamentally contradicts all of classical Newtonian physics, replacing it with a set of special cases usable only once, rather than being universally usable. (with adjustments for precision)

You can easily transform between coordinate systems to express planetary position. As you have said, yes, that's trivial. But the geocentric model is a mere observational, positional descriptor. The heliocentric model unifies the separate discoveries of F=ma and the conservation of angular momentum.

Your reference to "phi" is unexplained but ϕ is often used to denote angles, so I could also interpret your attempted crticism as suggesting that you think there should be some rotational transformation involved in my argument. This is not necessary for my argument, although you could do it if you wanted. In fact, you could use any kind of crazy coördinate transform that you might dream up. Any one will work, but the laws of motion will have to be written differently depending on which transform is chosen.

I leave it as an exercise to write down the form of the classical laws of motion that would apply under my transform.

It should be clear by now what I mean. If not, I don't plan to clarify further. This is the end of the road for this sub-thread.

...Then, there is the "mars problem" that the geocentric model cannot explain:

http://www.universetoday.com/36487/difference-between-geocentric-and-heliocentric/

This is a problem with the traditional religious geocentrism, but not with the geocentrism described in my posts.

That's not a distinction I care to discuss.

Quote
Even more importantly:...
Why would anyone in their right mind do the transforms from a geocentric model to do this work?

Here you have hit upon the real reason that the heliocentric model is classically preferred. Under classical mechanics, the laws of physics take on the same form in all inertial frames of reference but not in a non-inertial frame of reference. In a non-inertial frame, one has to derive different laws of physics.

Thus, it's much simpler to choose our reference frame as an inertial frame because then the laws of physics will be written the same in all other inertial frames. The heliocentric frame is technically not inertial (because the rest of the universe exists, after all), but it's approximately inertial. This means that, under classical mechanics, there really is a sense in which it is "more true" to say that the Earth revolves around the Sun rather than vice versa: namely, choosing the Sun as the centre allows us to deal with planetary physics using the same laws of physics that apply in all inertial reference frames, whereas under my model, you need to use different laws of physics for planetary motion compared to the physics in an inertial frame!

However, this is nothing new. I pointed out in all my posts above that the heliocentric model is simpler and more useful. That was never in dispute.

I should note, however, that this theoretical advantage is unique to classical mechanics, and is not a property of the universe. The point of the Einstein quote I gave is that we could devise a system of physics where the laws are the same in all frames, even ones defined by crazy transforms. The fact that the heliocentric model has conceptual advantages is a consequence of the models we use, rather than a fact of nature.

No no no no, a thousand times no. The geocentric model is inconsistent in any "science" you wish to propose. There is no universally applicable rules (laws) that can be derived on that basis.

Quote
Here you have hit upon the real reason that the heliocentric model is classically preferred. Under classical mechanics, the laws of physics take on the same form in all inertial frames of reference but not in a non-inertial frame of reference. In a non-inertial frame, one has to derive different laws of physics.

The heliocentric model is preferred because it is always consistent with the Newtonian physics of the time. The geocentric model is discarded because it is never consistent with ANY physics.

You speak of a "preference" for the heliocentric model as-if there's some institute somewhere that has built a strong, consistent astrophysical science based on the geocentric model that does not purely and totally contradict Newtonian physics.

What I'm telling you is that there is nothing that can possibly take the form of a "law of physics" that is derivable from the geocentric model.

Your term "inertial frame of reference" appears to be a self-invented term that I do not want to discuss.

This...language....you have developed is offensive to me. It's as-if you read "Flatland" and believe the solar system can be described in 2D positional coordinate system, ignoring mass, acceleration, density and the gravitational constant.

Galileo point out the initial inconsistencies and problems of the geocentric model. Those problems make the geocentric model not just "non-preferred", they make it contradictory to the wider body of physics.

The discoveries of Newton put the final nail in the coffin of the geocentric model because it became clear for all to understand that the physics governing the movement of planets is the same as the physics governing rotational motion (accounting for friction and losses) on earth itself. All was unified in a clear and complete description that scales beautifully to the planetary level.

At the very least, read the Wikipedia citation, or read the book "Galileo":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

The Inquisition put Galileo under house arrest for the rest of his life, under the charge of "advocating heresy against the church".

The models are not equivalent and translatable. One is ridiculously inconsistent.
« Last Edit: September 17, 2015, 12:39:29 PM by mefla »

johnny847

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #396 on: September 17, 2015, 12:09:45 PM »
Wow I've missed out on a interesting thread.

Now where's my popcorn....

sol

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #397 on: September 17, 2015, 12:15:03 PM »
I'll try to close this topic without being insulting:

Too late?

Faraday

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #398 on: September 17, 2015, 12:25:11 PM »
I'll try to close this topic without being insulting:

Too late?

Oh come on. Give me some credit when I behave. I can take this conversation places that will make your eyes spurt blood...

Cathy

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Re: "Prosperity Gospel"
« Reply #399 on: September 17, 2015, 12:32:17 PM »
You are confused about many things, mefla.

But let's just discuss what is a fact and is not relative: the centre of mass of the solar system is much closer to the Sun than to the Earth (although it is not at the centre of the Sun). That is just a fact and it will be true in any model. Almost all of your complaints are based on an assumption that a geocentric model would involve moving the centre of mass in the solar system (for example, your strange claim that "the sun would have to be super-small, with gravitational field many times smaller"). That is just irrelevant to what is being discussed here.

Your claim that cartesian coördinates cannot fully describe astrophysics is very strange (and is wrong).

Rather than addressing all of your strange claims, I'm just going to take a step back and clarify what I have actually claimed in this thread (and it is not wrong): The change from the geocentric model to the heliocentric model is just a change of cooördinate system. Either cooördinate system can be used for all physics, although under classical mechanics the heliocentric model is much simpler for some things. No other claims have been made by me. I'm not sure if you actually disagree with the claim I've made, but if you do, you are mistaken, and I've already explained why. The Einstein source also explains this, if you click the link and read it.