rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (07/03/84)
[from the Shirley Maclaine book] > Some of our scientists suspect this energy is there but they can't measure it > because it is not molecular. They say there's an energy that fills > interatomic space, but they don't know what it is. Even they call it the > cohesive element of the atom, which they term 'gluon'. They know it is not > matter, but rather units of energy. ...it is this subatomic energy that makes > up the Source. Therefore the Source, that form of energy, is not molecular. > Now I'm going to tell you the hard part to understand, but the part that is > the most important. This energy is the energy that makes up the soul. Our > bodies are made out of atoms; our souls are made of this Source energy. [from the author of the original article] > This is interesting because it is a synthesis of religious and > scientific ideas which reconciles the conflict without contradicting > either. [from David Canzi, watmath!dmcanzi, in response to above] > The passage above is interesting, not because it synthesizes science and > religion, but rather as a case study of how almost anything poorly > understood by most people can be used to "explain" almost anything else > as poorly understood. Hence: the soul is made of gluons. > I wouldn't be surprised in the future to see telepathy and psychokinesis > "explained" by quark emissions, and tales of UFO's travelling faster than > light using gluonic drives! It's a new variant on the scientific method. First, pick a phenomenon that you would like to believe does exist. Then take a particle or phenomenon uncovered but not fully understood by scientists. Then simply merge the two. Hence, ESP is caused by elementary particles communicating to each other through instantaneous communication across some othe dimension than the three we know. See? Try and "disprove" that!!! (Of course, you haven't yet proven the existence of ESP. Perhaps the gluons are influenced by our free will. Perhaps they ARE our free will. Whoops!! I'm doing it again.) -- Now I've lost my train of thought. I'll have to catch the bus of thought. Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlr
sunny@sun.uucp (Sunny Kirsten) (07/06/84)
Greetings:
Just because you don't understand or believe in something, and just
because scientists can't measure something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Were you to travel back in time and warn the peasants to stay away from
a specific area because it was poisoned with invisible evil spirits at what
would in the future become the site of a Uranium mine, does not mean that
radiation does not exist, just because they would have been unable to see it.
Now, how would you prove to them that you spoke the enlightened truth?
Unless you could dazzle them with a geiger counter which hadn't been invented
yet by the scientists of the time?
{ucbvax|decvax|ihnp4}!sun!sunny (Sunny Kirsten of Sun Microsystems)rlr@pyuxn.UUCP (Rich Rosen) (07/09/84)
> Just because you don't understand or believe in something, and just > because scientists can't measure something, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. > Were you to travel back in time and warn the peasants to stay away from > a specific area because it was poisoned with invisible evil spirits at what > would in the future become the site of a Uranium mine, does not mean that > radiation does not exist, just because they would have been unable to see it. > Now, how would you prove to them that you spoke the enlightened truth? > Unless you could dazzle them with a geiger counter which hadn't been invented > yet by the scientists of the time? Interesting analogy. Allow me to extend it. Apparently if you were a peasant in that time, you might believe the mystical person from the future and his talk of "uranium" (unless your fellow peasants labelled him/her a witch because he/she weighed the same as a duck :-). On the other hand, you would be just as likely to believe another person who also claimed some mystical powers, when he/she said that the world was not flat, or round, but shaped like a giant frog, with the world as we know it somewhere on the frog's back. If *I* were the peasant in question (assuming I was educated to think independently as people are supposed to be nowadays), I wouldn't believe either of them. Of course, in reality, neither of us would have believed either of the mystical people. The church would have branded them as heretics and their words would have been drowned out by the crackling fire. The point is: in the absence of verifiable evidence (or well-developed thought experiments grounded in reality), ALL speculative ideas (ESP, god, tooth fairy, Easter bunny, free will) have *equal* weight: none. -- "Submitted for your approval..." Rich Rosen pyuxn!rlr
debray@sbcs.UUCP (Saumya Debray) (07/21/84)
sunny@sun.UUCP: > Just because you don't understand or believe in something, > and just because scientists can't measure something, doesn't mean > it doesn't exist. That's right! And bugs in computer programs are caused by little green men from Alpha Centauri. I wish to bloody hell people like Maclaine would bother to learn a little more physics before shooting their idiot mouths off into the wild blue yonder! Maybe having to solve Schrodinger's equation for the hydrogen atom would be a good start ... -- Saumya Debray, SUNY at Stony Brook uucp: {cbosgd, decvax, ihnp4, mcvax, cmcl2}!philabs \ {amd70, akgua, decwrl, utzoo}!allegra > !sbcs!debray {teklabs, hp-pcd, metheus}!ogcvax / CSNet: debray%suny-sbcs@CSNet-Relay
crm@rti-sel.UUCP (07/27/84)
So Shirley MacLain can't solve Schroerdinger's equation -- can you sing and dance? I don't see any difference between "I don't know what this is, I don't know what gluons are -- maybe this is gluons" and "I don't know what causes this bug, I can't find a reason, and I don't understand what the hardware is doing, maybe it's the hardware's fault." If she has to get permission by solving S's equation (damned if I'm gonna type it again) maybe you should have to explain to me the meaning of the *Avelokitesvara Sutra* before you can talk about philosophy. (Or I'll make it easy on you -- just Kant's *Critique of Pure Reason*.) Grumpily, Charlie Martin