The Vatican says alien life forms may exist:

http://www.allegro.cc/files/attachment/595321

Mouhouhahahahaha

All hail the Space Pope!
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Call me when the Vatican accepts the heliocentric theory. Or the fact that there may be pedophilic priests. Or evolution.

I thought the Catholic church endorsed evolution. Oh well.

Personally, I think if you believe in God you probably should believe in aliens (why would God make all those planets and put life on just this one?) but who cares what the Vatican says about it anyway? I care what the Church has to say about life on other planets about as much as I care what Einstein says about God, or what Michael Jordan thinks about Ball Park hot dogs franks ....

Any intelligent Christian accepts Micro-Evolution, (idea that animals change on a small scale).

Well, anyone accepts that, period. Typically when Evolution is used in that context, they're talking Old-Earth Creationism style. Belief in micro-evolution hardly requires an official stance, I would think. That's like saying they endorse the idea of the colour orange.

Tell that to the Presbyterians and Catholics in Northern Ireland...

I think anyone who believes that there is an all powerful being running the show must answer lots of questions much harder than that one.

Or a few US states!

I'm being tested? Daaaayyyyaaaam .....

@ Karadoc: shoot, but beware I'm not a christian

It's a self imposed test, 23yrold3yrold. I'll put it another way. If having a self-consistent set of beliefs is important to you, then there are a lot of issues that need to be addressed regarding the existence of an all powerful being. The question you asked was a very minor one in comparison to the others. If having that self-consistency is not important to you then reason and logic are useless with regards to your beliefs, and so it would be a waste of time to "test" you. I'm sure you understand what I mean. :p

Well.. I didn't really mean that I'd be the one asking the questions. To be honest, which are the hardest questions kind of depends on some of the answers. The hard questions kind of follow on from one another, you know? However, I'll put forward a couple of the favourites, just so that you get a flavour of what I'm talking about.

If God is all knowing, and all powerful, and "good"; why does he let bad things happen? Wars, natural disasters, genetic disease, etc... surely God has the power to end these things, but for some reason He chooses not to. Why?

Being all knowing, God must know what each person likely to believe and what they are not likely to believe. He must know exactly what kind of events must occur in my life in order for me to believe in His existence. Obviously it is far more likely that someone growing up in a Christian family (or religion X, if you like) than someone who has never heard of [religion X]. How can it be said that God loves us all equally if he knowingly puts such people at a huge disadvantage. If people are sent to hell for not following a religion they have never even heard of in their entire life, surely that is completely unfair. How can anyone justify this action of a supposed "good" God?

There are many different religions in the world. Many different people who believe in many different Gods and who have many different holy texts. With so many different groups of people citing their holy book as absolute truth, and threatening hell (or whatever) to people who don't join their cause, how can we know which is the real God? Which group of holy people can we trust? Surely it is impossible to know who is right without further guidance, and we have an eternity of happiness or suffering on the line. Why doesn't God give us a hand with these kinds of decisions?

Ok, that's enough for now. Like I said, maybe these questions aren't so hard on their own. The tricky thing is how they can end up cornering someone into really tight spots with the right follow up questions. I don't intend to try to do that here on the forums. I just wanted to point out that there are indeed some tough questions.

Contradictory bullshit constitutes most of it. "God can't make a rock so big He can't lift it" and other silliness. The fun part is, you probably can't bring up a general problem like this with religion that I didn't have personally as an atheist either. So I lose either way; there's always going to be some questions you can't answer.

No authority here. Old news. Really, really, really old news.

Where in the Bible is any emphasis given on "religion"? What if I could show you a Bible quote that says religion is completely irrelevant?

Why trust people at all? People are liars and idiots. Also ties into the last question.

No freaking kidding, which is why I'm giving you lame answers. Not to open serious discussion or anything (another reason for my sound-bite answers) I really, really doubt anyone's got any actual "hard" question that hasn't been answered or at least addressed over the years. If there were such a trump card, someone would have come across it somewhere along the lines I'm sure. It would be the first thing posted in every religion thread, and each thread would end instantly.

Actually there's a very easy loophole out of all those questions: ``we don't know God's mind or his plan, ir probably all makes sense somehow but we are not able to understand it. If we just have faith it will all become clear in the end.'' End of discussion, full stop.

As an atheist I'm obviously playing Devil's advocate here (pun intended). My point is, you can try to be rational about it, but at its core faith is not rational. Try arguing logic against it and at some point people will just go "meh, I don't know God's mind so I can't answer that question."

Anyway, nice cartoon.

Per that same BBC News article:

That probably means that they're going to make their exact position clear.

EDIT: my understanding is...

If God directly controled everything that happens then we would have no free will. We do have free will, ergo God does not directly control everything that happens.

The judgment is according to how you lived your life versus the opportunities you got to live it. It's about the extent to which you were able to value the objective over the subjective. If you never got a chance to go to church then that's fine. If you lived next to a church and never went, that's not necessarily wrong. I think most people go to church because it is a venue where they can see other people of a similar mindset and through which they can do more to achieve the things they consider important — reaching out to the community, working for charity, etc. So it's the same basic reason that people come here, i.e. that they want to in order to enhance their lives, not because they fear retribution of they don't.

Unless you're a Mormon, you don't believe that Jesus visited America at any point, or that his message could have carried across there for 1500 years ish. I don't think that means that the people who lived then are automatically damned.

This whole text is predicated on the idea that you will be judged based on whether you picked the correct church. I don't think that's a part of most people's beliefs any more.

If you want some interesting reading, you could read Rama II by A.C.Clarke, but I personally think Rama II was the poorest from the series.

Can you make something that has only a left side but no right side ?
so if there is to be life there will also be death, and if there is to be love there will also be hate. Unfortunately the balance is quite lost at the moment, but that is not of their doing.

And my goddess and god never claimed to be "all powerfull" however sometimes they do intervene.

true.. according to my beliefs any religion is "good" if it aplies to the rule "Do no harm , not to others and not to yourself"
I don't believe in heaven nor in hell but I'm convinced anything you send into the world will return to you threefold.

all Gods and Goddesses are aspects of one god and one goddess. I think the divine will show itself to you in a way you can understand it, even to an atheist( maybe that is what sience actually is). In fact you can trust any group that is not trying to take away your freedom, but giving you advice in what to do with your life.
advice and understanding should always overrule rules and restrictions. If it is not violating the most important rule of all: "Do no harm".

I can on my computer
Though usually those are defined as having a front side but no back side, I think. Or maybe they just call them one-sided? I don't remember :S

Take a strip of paper, twist it once and glue the ends together. Enjoy your one-sided Moebius strip.

A mobius strip happens to have a left side and a right side. They also happen to be the same side.

and that applies to life and death as well .. if you travel the life-side you will eventually come to the death-side and vice versa.

It's a matter of semantics, but I'd say that if something has only one side, it doesn't have a left and a right side. It just has a side.

http://www.allegro.cc/files/attachment/595330
Papa Ratzinger is in reality the Palpatine Emperor...
Be carefull about that.. the world will FINISH!!!!

MUHAHAHAWHAHAHAHAAAAAAAHAAAAAA!!!!!!

Traditionally it means they are in fact damned. When asked how is that fair, you'll get, "Why is it fair that we get to go to heaven and meet a perfect God? What's fair is that we all should be damned." But while it's true that perhaps an unholy person has no business in the presence of a holy god, that doesn't mean the opposite of eternal damnation in hell is a fair punishment...

And I think that illustrates the flaw of most organized Christian religions. They are so wrapped up in defining God and His attributes as if He were describable to begin with. It reminds me a lot of our lovely math discussions of infinity; once you define one thing, something else makes no sense. So Christian religions are left with a juggling act because of their love of defining every last thing as eternal truth.

I think that's how most Christians would respond.

However, it's interesting that free will really isn't a very Biblical idea. At least, not at the level that Christian religions teach it. If you go through the Bible from front to back, you'll see that it is more deterministic. Yes, there are free will teachings, but they are overshadowed by deterministic election. God nudging people along in a certain direction, if you will.

God created Adam. God picked Noah and his family. God picked Abraham. God chased Lot out of Sodom and Gomorrah. God picked Jacob over Esau. God picked Moses. God "hardened Pharaoh's heart". God chose Samson to be a judge while he was "still in the womb." And so on.

Solomon wrote, "So I reflected on all this and concluded that the righteous and the wise and what they do are in God's hands, but no man knows whether love or hate awaits him. All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not." I believe he's simply referring to death in general, but I love his writing because he's very deterministic as well.

In the New Testament, you have God saving Paul (Saul) while he was on the way to go murder some Christians. Jesus said "I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours... My prayer is not for [the disciples] alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world." Heavy on the destiny; light on the free will.

Many Christians would respond with, "God picked based on what he saw in them." Well, Paul wrote that "no good thing" dwells in us while we are "dead in our sins." One sin is as infinite sins to a Christian. So picking someone because he's just a bit better than another doesn't seem fair if we are all equally bad and damned to hell.

And what about when God picking Samson before he was born? "Oh, God knew that Samson would be a good judge." Actually Samson was a pretty bad one. And furthermore, if God knew what Samson would do, how is it really free will?

It's problematic to think you have to define God as only having infinitely good characteristics in the way we might think is necessary. A lot of religions doctrine is only considered true because it must be for some other thing to remain true (circular).

Eh, so what's my point? I really don't have one. Well, other than Christianity should be about believing in Jesus and doing good things in his example. It shouldn't be about judging, or damning individuals or groups, or worrying what significance alien life is. Surely God will take care of all that in His own time.

I thought the Vatican admitted heliocentric theory was correct in 1971, but this page seems to put the year at 1992.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CE2DD1339F932A35751C1A964958260

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It's good that the Catholic Church did that, and I wish the Orthodox Church did that as well. As the knowledge of mankind grows, religion should adapt. In a perfect society, there would not be a need for religion, as everyone would be educated and logic would prevail. But it will never happen...so it's much better for religion to adapt to the new circumstances so as that religious people come in contact with the advancements of science.

The core teachings of Christianity are not affected by the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence. The meaning of Jesus teachings is to love each other, which is a very important concept for a peaceful society. It does not matter if there is only one or thousands of planets with life.

Of course logic is just another form of faith.

Of course, that's not really Jesus's teachings so much as the teachings of just about everyone for the last couple thousand years. By no means is it exclusive to that guy, nor to religion.

That used to be a lot more true than it is today; example: Newton wrote more about theology than he did physics and mathematics. Newton and his contempories viewed scientific investigation as a way of unveiling the grandeur of Gods creation. Science only became a bugaboo when it started to contradict the Bible (ie evolution).

I'm pretty sure that the Vatican accepted heliocentric theory long before that. Its just that they apologized and vindicated Galileo at that point in time.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_and_the_Roman_Catholic_Church. It would appear there current stance is to accept a theistic-evolutionist position with God coming acting to give men big brains and a soul at some point.

Logic has nothing to do with faith...apples and oranges.

Logic by itself is nothing special.
I can say, "all humans are mortals. I am human, so I am mortal". Which is perfectly logical.
The point is, can this be falsifiable?.
I can defend all I want this statement in the name of Logic (The Almighty ), but there is no way to prove it.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche: not wanting faith because everybody can be superman (Übermensch).

Well Nietzsche had some complexes, in fact he was pretty weak in real life and was really submissive to his mother. Plus it were just words, later unfortunatelly abused by german regime.

+1 Insightfull.

You have to have faith in your own logic and faculties, and that the universe really is as we currently see it.

Logic is universal, objective and absolute. This is self-evident and does not require faith.

Has nothing to do with logic.

Our logic is defined by US. We are hardly logical, nor perfect, so I wonder how "Logic is universal, objective and absolute.".

Do you even know what logic is? If a implies b, and a, then b; if logic were not objective and absolute, we would live in a world without causality where no event could ever be predicted. Forget having computers, or mathematics, or even basic reasoning: the fabric of the universe would unravel.

And how can you know its absolute and objective?

... it's self-evident. Or are you saying you don't think rules like "If a-then-b, and a, then b" are true? Or "If not a, then not-a"? That you don't think 1 + 1 = 2?

This has nothing to do with physics or evidence or "thinking", or observations of any kind. This has to do with the fundamentality of causality and implication. Really, Moose, you'd have to be really good at denying the self-evident to not admit to these things. It really is exactly the same as denying that 1 + 1 = 2; in every way.

Meaning we get to define the underlying axioms. Do you need to have faith in an axiom?
(That's a rhetorical question. Don't answer it.)

In other news, the Space Pope would make a good avatar.

I think you're just making some rather large assumptions.

That in itself is an assumption. We use it because it happens to work.

So you're saying that 1 + 1 is not 2?

Can something be red and not be red at the same time?

Can a triangle have four sides?

Please, understand what the heck you're talking about before making a fool out of yourself like this. It's not a matter of fact; it's inherent in the very meaning of the words.

Well, a newspaper can be read, and it's black and white.

Did I say that? I said it happens to work, so we use it.

Can something be in two places at once? Can a person have eyes that don't see the same colors as me?

I couldn't care less that you see me as a fool.

That observation (and experiment) of the world around us allows us to deduce true knowledge about the world (ie, the world is as it appears to us) is something you need to believe in, it cannot be proven (this is quite an important filosphical point). Logic is not something you need to believe in, since it is completely rigorous (though you can debate about the basic postulates and axioms). Logic itself does not lead to truth if the axioms are false or contradictory.

What I said is that I think the universe and everything we see is based on our own interpretation of it. How that can be "absolute and objective" is beyond me since everything is subjective.

Ah, cogito ergo sum: you can only verify your own existence, everything else could be a figment of your imagination?
That cannot be ruled out, but it does seem somewhat unlikely, don't you agree? Or is that not what you meant?

Unlikely, but so is our own existence depending on who you talk to.

According to some, so unlikely that they reason a divine entity had to make circumstances just right for us to be here, otherwise there would be only one or two places in the universe where you could expect life to be, and what would be the odds that that happened to be us in that case?

My point was that logic such as if a then b was not always known. George Booles algebras was invented after all. And people like the 17th and 18th century mathematicians often viewed such investigations as revealing Gods truth. Then the question is: how narrow is your definition of God?

Surely the real question is why go to all the effort of working top-down when you can reverse engineer the universe far more efficiently bottom-up?

Mathematics and logic have no assumptions. We don't assume anything, ever. There are a number of axioms that are defined to be true, and then everything else follows from those. It cannot be wrong. It is definitely true.

The application of maths to the real world (physics, science and what-not) relies on certain assumptions which we use "because it happens to work". Do not confuse this with mathematics.

Tell that to a vulcan.

By the way: according to my religion, noone sees the whole "world*" as it is. All we see are different "maps" of that world, so we at least have some idea where we are going. Weather such a map is "good" depends on what you want to do with it. For a cyclist, a roadmap for cars is quite useless and vice versa.

• actually everything there is

Whilst it's true that we all see the world differently, we can at least agree on certain concepts - we can generally agree that when we see the colour blue that it is called "blue", whatever any of us actually percieve that as mentally. Okay, you can theorise about that all you want. The difference between science and what we call religion is it seems to me that religions make stuff up based on what "feels" right whereas science observes and experiments to ensure that its theories are correct. I can see why, for example, the good christian god exists - it's comforting to invent a father figure who cannot ever be corrupted and who genuinely has your best interests at heart and cares about you. I've been there, I've believed, really believed it.

However, that doesn't mean that everything we believe is true. In fact, one reason that the scientific method is so good at determining useful (true) beliefs about the world is because it constantly tries to disprove them - only the ones that have survived all we can throw at them are the ones we can truly say we believe. Just because I can believe there is a teapot orbitting the sun, does not make it the case. Evidence is the key, my dear Watson .

You know, there are religions that are based on observations and naturally evolved with humanity. Those religions have a lot of concepts in common with eachother and even with sience... No wonder if you know that science as we know it sprouted from those very religions.

The only "problem" with sience is you can never know the workings of everything let alone proof them. but still there are things you "know" to be true without evidence.

I'm sure in time more and more of the concepts of my religion will be proven ( it hapend before) But it's impossible to proof them all. One reason is sience always seems to bee looking at just one gear of the clockworkand say .. there is no evidence this gear moves any hand

Sience is a tool to work with in a part of this world, but no more than that.

Well, I'd argue that all beliefs have been formed through observation:

"Hey, if we plant this at this time of year then the plants grow stronger, surely the forces of nature are with us".

"This universe we're in... it must have some reason to exist. I mean, that cloud exists to rain upon us, this tree exists to provide us with fruit to eat. I create things like tools and I'm the only thing I know which creates things, therefore whatever created me must have been like me!". Douglas Adams has said it far better than I.

Belief systems (including what we might casually refer to as religion) are all likely to contain similar concepts - we're all similar beings, we all think similarly (see comment about colour). Our differences are minor, thus I believe our fantastical thinking will be minor in its differences. Not to say that we cannot believe a wide variety of things, the human imagination is a marvelous thing! As far as I'm aware science has its roots in natural philosophy, which of course is trying to do the same as a lot of religion - explain the nature of the universe we're in.

I don't see where you're coming from with your "problem" - all I feel is biological in nature. I might feel that I'm hungry - that feeling has come about through millions of years of evolution. Basically, anything that didn't feel the urge to eat didn't eat and did not reproduce. Natural selection is a simple concept and easily simulated, it's not hard to see that occurring over a period of billions of years to produce us. Surely you are forming a hypothesis about the world based upon your feelings (that you've observed you have) then attempting to explain that by your further observations about the world?

The difference between this and the scientific method is that the scientific method does not claim to know what it is searching for - there's always room for improvement and it assumes nothing at the start of the search. I'd argue this is far more likely to find us the "truth", if such exists. Science is a tool, yes, but it's by far the best tool we have for finding out about who and what we are and where and why we exist .

If you can provide me consistent evidence to prove your beliefs, I'd be glad to look at it and decide for myself .

Actually, no, we can't. There was an interesting article about this in either New Scientist or Scientific American a while back, and although it seems clear that we all agree on calling a particular range of colours "blue", this is not actually so clear.
I think there was even the claim that people who were never taught to see the difference between blue and green (might have been two other colours, I don't remember), say because their language has no separate words for blue and green, actually do not see the difference. Conversely, people who were taught to distinguish between shades of what we would call blue as two different colours could more easily tell them apart than someone who was not taught the difference. It sounds odd, but things are not as straightforward as they appear.

- not ALL beliefs, but some religions

That is a good example especially if nature as a whole is your "god"

Did you ever wonder why the world works the way it does.. why is there a self correcting balance. despite all humanity's efforts to make a mess out of it.

According to sience our thinking is nothing more than an electrochemical reaction.
Samewise sience tries to deny there is any intelligence or force bigger than us ruling the world. Probably because some people don't like the idea. I hope you see the analogy of this.

At some point in history the five elements where dropped by sience as being useless. The problem is .. middle-agers didn't understand their meaning.
They're not "building blocks" !

you can't live without air
you can't live without water
you can't live without earth ( all living things must eat)
you can't live without fire ( If you don't burn ( betabolise) anything you're dead)
and without your spirit you wouldn't be here at all.

A change in one of these can and will cause a change in any of the other 5.
Take away air or earth and your fire goes out

If all is just molecules then tell me what is life ?

A concept sience HAS proven .. "All is in vibration" even earht itself

@Evert our eyes are less sensitive in gradations of blue than in other colors.

Well, humans invented the numbers and things used in mathematics and science. In an alien math book it might look like 4 + 9 = 2. Humans understand their world through the concepts we create to explain the things we didn't understand before. There are countless theorems that can never be proven, and the only reason some theorems became laws is because they were "proven" through other former theorems, without ever being disproven.

Everything is subjective. If you don't believe the world is round, for you it isn't. If you believe that you are God, to you, you are. There is no absolute except when you except something as absolute.

Just my 2 cents

That sounds reasonable, and is an interesting thought, but in a society where we have the concept of a "colour" and the concept of a colour that is "blue" (and the concepts of "concept" and "being" (is)) we can agree (I hope) that the potentially different impulses and neuron firings that consitute our sensing a given range of wavelengths of light are, indeed, within a similar general range we agree to label "blue" . Ahh, semantics.

From the all-knowing source that is Stephen Fry and the QI team, it would appear that the ancient greeks didn't percieve colour in the way we do. It's fascinating to know that our thoughts are apparently constrained by the words we use and our gramatical constructs. Here's an interesting thread on the QI forums I just found on the topic .

Frequently! Science is the only method I've found of reliably working out even a fraction of what really is.

I think all of those extinct species we've run into the ground might disagree with you. Why should there be a balance? The only reason I see for a balance in nature is that all of the species of plant, animal, bacteria and what have you have evolved in an environment containing the others. Given that natural selection and thus evolution enables new generations to contain mostly those offspring who have adapted to the environment sufficiently to have offspring of their own, I think there is a balance inherent in this method. Humanity is very successful at producing offspring and, to an unprecedented degree, we can adapt to our surroundings without requiring many new generations to do so. I think assuming that there is a balance in the world without our directly contributing to that balance is a dangerous place for all of us to be when we consider the future of our species. "Oh, launch that nuke then, nature will balance things out in our favour". What's so special about humans anyway?

Well, that would appear to be the case. Why, if we can explain the processes in our brain, even if we don't yet know, for example, exactly the processes that lead to the formation of belief and morality, do you feel the need to invoke any other explanation?

I disagree. The scientific method does not deny that there is a greater intelligence, it's just that there is no evidence for one given the simpler explanations we already have (and can test, with repeatable results). Why, if we can explain our existence through chemical processes, need we invoke a deity or "higher hand"'s involvement? God's been remarkably lazy... If you can provide me with observations and evidence for the existence of a higher power, I will gladly take it into consideration. If it turns out I'm wrong, then so be it, I'll have been wrong - your new theory will replace the old, and I will believe in your beliefs, because you have shown me, in a repeatable fashion, that it is the case. That's how science works. However, I have seen no evidence that we need to invoke a god to explain our existence and much evidence that we could be formed simply from chemical processes and the physical "laws" of the universe.

The universe is a fascinating place just as it is, why do we need to find ways to make it more complicated than it really is?

You just said it. Conciousness appears to be merely an emergent effect of billions of years of natural selection and evolution.

EDIT:

To a degree I think you're correct, however there's a difference between how we describe a concept and the fact that it exists - we use a base ten number system, so our value for pi is 3.14(etc). However, that doesn't affect the fact that there is a ratio between the circumference and the radius of a perfect circle and that its a measurable constant (at least where we are here in the universe). The number system is subjective and arbitrary, the fact that there is a ratio which exists is universally true (to the best of our efforts to disprove it ).

Everything can potentially be disproven. Our best model of the world so far consists of all of those theorums we have as yet not disproven. It might be that some of those theorums will never be disproven, but you can't rule out the fact that they might be. Some things have just survived experimentation for far long and in far wider contexts than others.

But that doesn't change the fact that the planet we live on is a globe .

I can believe I can throw lighting from my hands. That doesn't change the fact that, as hard as I might try, I cannot in my current state throw lightning from my hands .

What if I told you that evolution is the conciousness of mother nature ?
atleast a part of it.

still we know what life is but we can't give a sientific definition.
As a witch I know that besides Living and dead(lifeless) things there are things that have only a small piece of "life" in them. they're not completely lifeless nor are they completely living.

and what about earth itself ? there is metabolism in the big picture...

Offcourse we contribute to that balance aswell, but nature as a whole clearly does it's best to recover from imbalance. I didn't say we couldn't create a disaster. Nature WILL balance thing out, of that I'm sure, but she won't do it in our favour if we go too far !

I believe it is our task to care for the world, and we're not doing well at the moment I'm affraid. We're not "special" in the meaning we can do what we want with anything and everything. We may use the world but it is not ours.

As for the rest of my believes:
We all, all living things are spirits, some having a physical body, some more than one ( compare: super organism), some had a body but not anymore and some never had one. As live evolves so do our spirits, wich is what we actually are. They make you , you and me , me.

Because the world is a dynamical and complicated system capable of dealing with minor perturbations - because in the end that's all we are: a minor perturbation. The world can cope with the impact of meteors, nothing we can do comes close.

So what?
Does that notion somehow alter the fact that you're a living, breathing, thinking human being?

Science says nothing about there being or there not being a higher intelligence. Science does, however, offer you a way to study and possibly explain, say, cloud formation and wheather patterns without needing a wheather deity.

Yes and good riddance. You're arbitrarily sticking labels on things that are needed to survive that correspond to the classical elements. This makes sense in a cluture that doesn't know better as a way to systematise empirical knowledge, but such a phenemenological classification does not teach you anything about the underlying structure or processes.

Congratulations. You completely missed the point of my message.

Matehmatics is discovered, not invented. Mathematical structures and relations exist whether we know about them or not. This is quite a different topic, however, that I've seen people debate ad nauseam and that I have no interest in getting into. Leaving that point aside, one apple plus one apple is two apples, even if you come from a completely alien world. So no, even if you're from a planet half way across the galaxy, 1+1=2.

That's just the thing: no two human beings are alike and the frequency response of different eyes are different. The interpretation of a particular response as "blue" is done in the brain, which has to be trained to make the distinction. I don't know if one can go so far as to say that seeing colour is something that has to be learned (independently of your eyes being able to do it), but I think it is.

Even more striking, perhaps: what we would call an ascending sequence of tones, the ancient Greeks would have called a descending sequence of tones - the nomenclature of "high" and "low" tones was reversed (source: a book called "Music and Mathematics" or something to that effect that I leant to a friend a while back and haven't got back yet). To me at least that's completely counter-intuitive and sounds insane.

Words taken right out my heart!

I doubt we have to learn to distinguish between coloured regions, I suspect that's built in. Our ancestors who ate the green things probably prospered compared to those who decided to try and eat rocks (dodgy explanation, but I hope you catch my meaning). Matching a particular response to "blue" is something I strongly suspect needs to be learned, but only so that we can talk and reason about blue things. I think you're right - explicitly reasoning about colour is something which is learned and not exactly intuitive.

It seems counter-intuitive to me as well. However, the idea of ascending and descending tones is entirely arbitrary until you can understand compression waves and frequencies. I wonder if you consider it counter-intuitive because you know that the higher tones correspond to higher frequency waves? Oh, and even then they're waves of descending period I guess .

It's not only what we need to survive, you can find the five elements anywhere in nature as a system. How long did it take sience to recognize the connection between actions in one place and reactions (read disasters) in another ?
And still some are ignoring warnings from very old and "tested and true" wisdom.
using "there is no sientific evidence" as an excuse to place profit before wise decisions.

Wisdom is also knowing when not to ...
Sience often just tells we CAN do something... but it usually takes more time for sience to see that it is not wise to do it.

That was kind of my point Evert. In a way I was playing devil's advocate, but in another way my point is that you can argue about this kind of thing all day, and in the end, someone will always find an argument against it.

It's all about energy and entropy. If there's balance in energy consumption and radiation, there's only a little growth in entropy. Basically all things in universe tend to be balanced hence the balance in the world.

Regarding 1 + 1 = 2 - what if those aliens would have not decimal system but for example system based on modulo 3, then they would only know 0, 1 and 2. and therefore 1 + 2 would equal 0.

As I recall, the point was actually that that was not the case.

In that particular example, smell is probably more important than colour. That said, I do see what you're trying to say, I just don't know if it's true or not. On the other hand, most mammals are dichromat rather than trichromat. Obviously being trichromat had some sort of evolutionary advantage to our ancestors, because most humans today are trichromat.

Actually, no. It's things like seeing the notes go up on a bar and associations build into the music itself, like an ascending theme for a bird that starts flying higher and higher or a descending theme for something that is falling down.

Your base makes no difference.

If they do all their calculations modulo 3, then yes, but that's equally true here on Earth. Besides, that doesn't make one apple plus two apples equal zero apples.

EDIT: I almost forgot...

You mean in the "every action has an equal and opposing reaction" sense?

First of all this has nothing to do with science. Second things can be true or well known independent of whether you used science to ascertain them or not (time-tried home cures come to mind). Third science does not imply you ignore common sense, as you seem to think. Fourth, science is about finding out why things work (and sometimes finding that actually they don't work), not about finding random new dogma's to replace old ones (though yes, that does happen - it's a human enterprise afterall).

Yes. Which, again, has nothing to do with science or science versus random superstition.

That's because that's not necessarily the point - but at least it can tell you why something may or may not be wise.
By the way, "science" has two C's in it.

Modular arithmetic, however, is a more advanced, or at least less intuitive, technique that emerges later on for dealing with specific problems (various cryptographic applications, etc.). The more intuitive and likely method is ordinary, up-to-infinity counting in whatever base, and in base 3 that just means that 1 + 2 = 10. So, 10b3 = 3b10. No inconsistency there.

Yeah, and 0 would equal 3, so where's the problem?

http://www.allegro.cc/files/attachment/595368

I, for one, embrace our new Allegroid overlords.

Wow Ariesnl, you really are worse than me, arguing against scientists (and even spelling science!). My turn (meanwhile call a backup):

Finding a theory about how things work is easy, you can put neurons, genes, gods, all you want, what makes the difference is if it can make predictions.
Personally, I think this is the key of science over religion.

However, people talk about science like it were developed by people with good intentions, without selfish desires and with no personal idealization of the world, where the result of the work is a harmonious and clear theory.

This is not true, scientists, like most of humans, are very different, and we will burn you alive if you dare to argue the basis.

The result is that, areas like biology and education are very incompatible:
In example; if you don't like some kind of food, it is not necessarily because million of years of evolution, but maybe because you have taught yourself that you don't like it.

I have heard that in physics (but note that this is not my area), Lee Smolin says that String Theory sucks, while string thoerists says that Lee Smolin sucks.

The final objective of science is to find a unified theory about how the universe work, but we still have to see if such thing is possible.

Very nice Johan. Praise the Gator!

About the 1 + 1 = 2 thing:
Despite the fact that I consider myself agnostic, a being that can make 1 + 1 != 2 I could probably call 'god'. (And no, without using different bases or whatnot, one apple and one apple not equal to two apples) Shouls be possible for an infallible being.

Fair enough. Still it would be interesting to see them trying to understand that there are three apples.

Holy Papallegroid!

That should be Johans new avatar!

They wouldn't care because they would know that is a group and is a subgroup of and that divides .

That's 'Lagranges Theorem'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolls_(Discworld)#Literacy_and_Numeracy

@ imaxcs: Gaia can do that .. a male and a female can make more than 2

@Alan W.: I'm the master of the typo

Shall I do a prediction ?...
To those who put profit in front of doing what is decent I say this:
"If you don't respect what was given to you, someone will get hurt.. and it won't be me".

actually this prediction has come out before, but some in this world are hard learners.

A prediction? Thats plain ol' bullshit.

I can do that too:

"If you do something bad, you will get hurt."

There are some problems here. If I do something bad and I DO get hurt, how do I know its because I did something bad? I mean, everyone gets hurt sometimes, so if a person did something bad they would eventually get hurt someday. Its this horoscope-like bullshit that bothers me.

Come out with something like this:

"If you take your grandmothers money and jewelery, you will get punched in the sack 3 times by a asian street rapper at noon in the 3rd Saturday of the year."

Now thats a prediction. I mean, sure, it can happen if you say it randomly, but theres a far lesser chance. Make predictions like that!

Oh... wait. What am I doing? Must be the coffee and late hour.

A horoscope is just a detailed drawing of a certain constallation, nothing more.

about the rest of my post ... Do you actually read the newspaper ?

Of course not. Newspapers store evil in them, evil demons that is. I only read them if I do a ritual of Ankjukta first, but that takes too long for reading a simple newspaper.

you can also clean it with fire..

That's cheating in the same way using different bases is.

1 pile of apples + 1 pile apples = 1 pile of apples.

At a certain level, religion and mathematics are both tied into the concept of unity. The most interesting number philosophically is 1.