Irredemable ignorance

[noons]

I have learned that there will soon be a "Galileo was wrong" conference at a hotel in Indiana. www.galileowaswrong.com/galileowaswrong/

It will be hosted by Robert Sungenis, author of the book of the same title. Jim S. mentioned him in a post last year, stating that this fact absolved him of the need to read anything this man had ever written. bedejournal.blogspot.com/2009/07/neo-geocentrism.html



I started this post because I want to know what members here think are the craziest, silliest, and confidence-dropping ideas that a human being can hold. And I'm not talking about general ignorance, popular misconceptions, or eccentric views. If my doctor has some strange ideas about how to manage money, that's not a problem, because I'm not going to him for financial advice. Same thing if my accountant believed in some odd folk-medicine. But if I found out that either of them believed that the Sun revolved around the Earth, I would immediately find a new doctor or accountant. That is because I think there is certain basic knowledge that everyone, regardless of profession or education level, needs to have in order to function in the modern world.

So, the question I ask is this: What ideas or beliefs about a particular subject, in your opinion, absolve you of needing to listen to someone speak about any subject at all?

Geocentrism has already been mentioned. Anything else?

[merkavah12]

Christ-mything. The arguments haven't got any better, in fact, I think we've hit rock bottom.

[merkavah12]

Oooh! Got another one: Voluntary Human Extinction.

www.vhemt.org/

Yes, because the best way to save the human race is to terminate the human race. That's Skynet logic, alright.

[ignorantianescia]

If one denies there is any fine-tuning because it would require us to infer "fine-tuning for" and thinking that simple probability fixes it (without using any other explanations, like the multiverse), then I find that irredeemable. "Fine-tuning for" only comes into play when design is used as an explanation, but the possibility of life in universe is certainly something that needs to be explained (certainly with physical constants and margins like these) and that is not inferring "fine-tuning for" any more than explaining why the moon is orbiting the earth is inferring "fine-tuning for", while it simply is an explanation (of course the moon also orbits the Sun).

So I would say, denying fine-tuning is a no-go.

[gymnopodie]

Flat earth, anyone?

www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm

[syzygy]

I thought the Flat Earth Society disbanded when the Apollo spacecraft sent back pictures of the earth from the moon. It was the one bit of evidence that they couldn't get around. They somehow mathematically reconciled voyages around the earth with the earth's being flat. I'm not sure how, maybe they pictured the earth as a moebiius strip bending in some extra dimension.. The ridiculous arguments of the Flat Earthers in the link sound like they're coming from a less honorable group.

[noons]

I always thought the Flat Earth Society website was really a parody of online dialogue.

[gymnopodie]

I thought the Flat Earth Society disbanded when the Apollo spacecraft sent back pictures of the earth from the moon. It was the one bit of evidence that they couldn't get around.

Cults can get around any bit of evidence, and once the members of a cult become sufficiently ensnared, they will believe the teachings of the cult leader over any evidence, no matter how evident. All religions are cultic to some degree. They are reluctant to change their beliefs even when more than sufficient evidence proves them wrong. Eventually they have to change or they fade out of existence. Knowledge is religion's biggest enemy.

Not too awfully far from where I live was a cult that thrived in the late nineteenth century. They were called Koreshans. They believed that we lived in the center of the earth. They had complicated mathematical formulas and performed experiments along the Florida beaches that 'proved' the sea curved upward - not downward.

Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Now think of a god that impregnated a virgin woman and lived a simple life as a human until he was executed by being nailed to a tree, only to spring back to life as a god again. Cultic behavior can cause otherwise intelligent people to believe the most incredible things.

koreshan.mwweb.org/teed_kshs.htm

[ignorantianescia]

Isn't it more likely that reluctancy to change is not exclusive to religions, but common in human beings as a whole?

About the divinity of Jesus and the Virgin Birth, I would think that there is a difference between these two notions and rejecting the scientific worldview. The latter two can operate perfectly in/alongside a scientific worldview, although they are of course not scientifically falsifiable. That does not mean it is fideist, however.

[gymnopodie]

Isn't it more likely that reluctancy to change is not exclusive to religions, but common in human beings as a whole?

I am the wrong person to ask since I am an independent thinker. I like change and don't fear it. I don't have a codependent personality, so religion is not useful to me. I am a better person being free of religion, although I understand that may not be true for everyone.

[noons]

^^ I think he just did answer the question.

[jonkon]

To the contrary, rwzero, disbelief in the Biblical account of a young earth is evidence of a superficial understanding of science. The Biblical account of creation is a historical fact, deriving its historical significance from being an exception to the normal course of events. Science cannot therefore question, much less disprove, the Biblical account without undermining its own validity and basis in observation. For this reason Einstein's Theory of Relativity and Bohr's Quantum Mechanics had to reduce to classical physics as a limiting case. Measurements used to justify an old earth confuse a "constraint" for the actual age of the earth, so that the possibility of the earth being much younger than the measurement is not ruled out. The imperative of an old earth to accommodate the infinitesimal probabilities of life arising, in turn ends up fundamentally contradicting itself, since our perception of time relies on such probabilities required for Darwinian Evolution never actually occurring. We are thus able to time sequence pictures of a burning building because of "Time's Arrow", the Second Law of Thermodynamics. And yes, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, contrary to physics textbooks, does indeed apply to open as well as closed systems. An important application of the Second Law to open systems is the operation of a TV or radio tuner. The Second Law limits how closely stations can be placed on the electromagnetic spectrum.

[ignorantianescia]

Einstein's Theory of Relativity was not developed in order to defend evolution. Peculiar behavior in the orbit of Mercury can be explained with general relativity and also some applications depend on it. Quantum mechanics was developed building on the explanation the result of the photoelectric effect, that energy occurs at discrete values (quanta), and earlier work by Max Planck.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics indeed is valid under open systems as well (it is a Law after all), but you have to keep in mind that work exerted on the (in this case open) system can decrease entropy. Also, arrangement in molecules can be a state with a lower energy or the energy barrier to be overcome can be significantly high to be improbable to break.

[jonkon]

I did not say that the Theory of Relativity or Quantum Mechanics themselves had any relationship to Creationism. I was using them as examples of the epistemological principle, whereby scientific facts must be brought into conformance with historical fact, that renders Darwinian Evolution fundamentally incompatible with the existence or possibility of science. A belief in miracles requires the existence of science to distinguish non-miraculous (repeatable) events from the miraculous. Science derives its relevance to society from its ability to predict future events through the analysis of relationships between repeatable events. An experiment, once performed, becomes part of the historical record. The scientific plausibility of a historic event is thus not relevant to the essential historical question of whether the event actually occurred, since the event in question may prove to be a counter example disproving our scientific knowledge.

Since individual particles can in effect travel "backwards" in time through CPT Symmetry, entropy only applies to aggregates of particles. The Second Law's increase in entropy refers to a collection of particles changing from a highly ordered (low probability) state to a lower order (higher probability) state. This does not rule out the transient situation of a temporary decrease in entropy, since the overall trend is towards increasing entropy. The sustenance of oscillations in a physical system requires the continual influx of energy to replace that lost (through the Second Law) during each cycle. It is this increase in entropy (a transition from a low to a high probability state) that constitutes our perception of the passage of time.