Skeptical

I get my idea about what the traditional Juedo-Christian conception of God and Satan primarily from:

1) The bible
2) Other biblical related reading (books and the Internet)
3) Interaction with Christians in person and on boards like this

I don't personally think these ideas reflect real entities, but I think I have a good understanding of what Christians believe the properties of these proposed entities are.

If you are implying that my ideas about these entities are somehow "in my head" through some non-empirical means, I would ask how would you know if they were or they weren't?

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Yes, I realize that, it's just that every time I have asked you details about how you evaluate these non-empirical entities I don't think I've gotten a straight answer. I have absolutely no idea how one would use philosophy or theology to investigate a non-empirical claim to knowledge that doesn't look indistinguishable from opinion. I am being completely serious, I just don't know how you would do it. If you have specifics, not generalities but specifics, I'm all ears.

I have to show my ignorance, because I don't know what your trying to say with this statement.

Vanderzyden

Scigirl,

First, let me reiterate that Einstein's GTR is incompletely understood, problematic, and controversial.

Second, I observe that you often post long excerpts which contain little more than assertions. The article does correctly present disagreement in the measurements of G, but it doesn't mention that the value of the gravitional constant is on the order of 10 to the -11 power. It is (6.6726 � 0.0001) x 10-11 N�m2/kg2. That is:

0.000000000066726

� 0.000000000000001

That means that the precision varies at the 15th decimal place , not the third decimal place as your authors would have us believe. A difference of 1% between measurements isn't significant in comparison with the value under consideration.

<a href="http://faculty.millikin.edu/~jaskill.nsm.faculty.mu/G.html" target="_blank">http://faculty.millikin.edu/~jaskill.nsm.faculty.mu/G.html</a>

We could explore this in detail, considering variations with orientation or time. Also, we must take the margin for experimental error into account. But the constant is known with a high-degree of precision, relative to its value.

Now, there is a larger problem with what you are presenting here, namely, the precision of phylogentic trees. This is utterly amazing. I have <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=001389" target="_blank">posted</a> some quotations from scientists who indicate significant disagreement in the comparison of phylogentic trees. We can't speak of comparative precision knowing that there is widespread disagreement in the methodology and the results. Most of the elements of these trees are highly speculative, relying upon homology as the evidence of common descent.

More importantly, I would like to know what the authors mean by precision:

What is meant by precision in such trees? The authors don't tell us. Presumably, it is a comparison of computerized models. But we must wonder what data is being input into the machines, and the basis for comparison to arrive at a precision of 41 decimal places. We are not told what the precision is, or what type it is (measurement or comparison).

Furthermore, we must wonder what is used as the "standard" tree. My understanding is that there is no such thing. Are you aware of how the standard was compiled, scigirl? Who "owns" it? Please show us.

These are some bold claims. How amazing it is that unreliable speculation is being compared to the precision of the gravitional constant or the charge of the electron. Outrageous!

Did you really find this article to be demonstrative, much less convincing?

Vanderzyden

[ September 17, 2002: Message edited by: Vanderzyden ]</p>

Doubting Didymus

How dare you? I am simply stunned beyond belief.

This is the simgle most stupidly disrespectful act I have ever seen from you yet. There have been entire threads dealing with the quotes you presented. They were used WRONGLY, they apply to PROKARYOTES, the discrepancies are due to HORIZONTAL GENE TRANSFER and endosymbionts. They do NOT APPLY to phylogeny at multicellular levels.

This has been pointed out to you time and time again, yet you continue to use the quotes as if they actually supported your outragious claims.

When will you get it? your use of quotes that refer to the refutation of the clonal theory of eukaryotic origin are not applicable to multicellular phylogeny.

As I pointed out in the libel thread, you are not guilty of libel if you did not understand the context, but if you continue to do this, you are definitely misrepresenting people.

How can you possibly defend your actions here? Do you seriously still think that problems with the phylogeny of eukaryotic origin apply to animals?

monkenstick

vander, as didymus pointed out, your quotes refer to prokaryotes and horizontal gene transfer. None of this affects Scigirls tree - so your objection is worthless.

Kevin Dorner

Sorry, wrong.

In stating the "significant digits" you don't count leading or trailing zeroes, which are considered a placeholder, unless in the case of trailing zeros that the quantity coincidentally happens to equal an exact power of 10, which must be stated (ie if the value of G were known precisely to five significant digits in this way, it would be expressed as 6.6700 x 10^-11.) This is why it's preferable to express G as 6.67x10^-11 rather than 0.0000000000667. (They don't call it "scientific notation" for nothing.)

So the commonly used value of G, 6.67x10^-11, would have three significant digits, and the precision varies in the third decimal place.

[ September 17, 2002: Message edited by: Kevin Dorner ]</p>

Coragyps

Please - this is eighth grade stuff you're clueless on now!

Happy Wonderer

LOL! You must not be an engineer after all? You are mixing up [I]scale[\I] and [I]precision[\I]. I hope that you aren't planning on sending anything to the moon in the near future. (Then again, maybe you are that NASA genius who mixed up Metric and English measurements and lost the Mars Climate Orbiter...)

HW

K

I don't believe Vanderzyden ever claimed to be an engineer. And after seeing his complete ignorance of significant digits, I'd say it's EXTREMELY unlikely that he is. If he did get an engineering degree, he should demand his money back.

Starboy

Guys, Vander is not here to discuss the evidence. Vander has entered the den of evil to do battle with the atheists for his god. We cannot win. His is a mind taken over by gods, spirits, demons and ghosts and takes little notice of the merely physical. If his counter blows are timid and miss the mark it matters not because his is the good fight. Vander lives in a fantasy world, and here we are trying to convince him with mere fact. Why are we wasting our time? He will acknowledge no error, no inconsistency no difficulty with his point of view. Everything we present will be inadequate and pointless. I don�t know about you but I have better things to do.

Adios
Starboy

Doubting Didymus

So long starboy and good luck! See you in some real threads, perhaps.

For myself, I find I am unable to tear myself away.