h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Bully for me?

No the Fred concept is not a religion at all, in any sense. It's just a name for a god concept.

You sound angry.

az

Angry as ever, I'm afraid - just read a bit of one of the Narnia books to my little sister. I used to love those books, before I discovered that they were allegory - now they just anger me.

A god concept is a religion, az (condescending tones). How else would you define one?
(What is it about you and drawing threads onto parallels of the God? thread? First the soul and the Business forum, now this!)

Mal,

I did say I was just teasing you. I won't tease you anymore, okay?

To me a god concept is not a religion. So there we disagree.

az

I know you were teasing! I just didn't have anything else to do on Hootoo!

that lucifer.com/virus place is really weird...

if you believe ina god or deity, but don't worship it in any way, is it still religion? is worshiping a living person with no odd ideas relgion? I think they both are

I don't think it's possible to believe in a god in the sense of nearly perfect being and *not* worship it. But the second is, most definately, because odd is so relative. A thought: would anyone have any *odd* ideas if they recognised them as odd?
I don't feel the Church of Virus is weird; just weirdly formed, for a meme of its type. And it is very informative on the subject of memes, for those who need elucidation on the subject.

by odd I mean not physically possible, supernatural

by odd I mean not physically possible, *not* supernatural

How do you know what's physically possible?

Although the concept of a rule or law is not empirically determined, the *contents* of the Laws of Physics *are* empirically determined.

Ergo, if it happens it is physically possible. Ergo, there is no such thing as the supernatural. The S word is not an explanation. It's a declaration of ignorance.

Noggin

*Revels in the wonders of the internet*
You know, I never thought of that before. So I guess the only things that aren't empirically decided are self-evident or rational philosophical statements.
And just to revel some more, this time in my newfound education in semantics (thankyou, Prof. Harry L. Weinberg)...
A thing has to be physically possible before it can happen...
Anything can happen...
Anything is physically possible...

Well, according to QM this *is* technically true.

However, some things are *so* unlikely, that even given the entire space and time of several billion universes to play with the odds against them *actually* happening are still mumblety billion to one.
For all intents and purposes such events *are* impossible.

Noggin

But isn't QM still limited by the Laws of Classical Physics? IE, a goat being pushed with equal force in opposite directions by frustrated farmhands (to name a random example) couldn't just drift off towards one farmhand (assuming the forces haven't changed) or instantaneously be converted into a spherical arrangement of photons in the other side of the galaxy. If the answer is yes, oh all knowing one, then either hundreds of scientists, my language or me are wrong.

It's statistics, Malaclypse. According to QM what happens to an individual particle is random (within certain statistical constraints). So, in theory, they *could* all move randomly in the same direction. But of course there are a *lot* of atoms. (What for instance are the odds of a hundred million coin tosses in a row all coming out heads? And that's a very small number with only two possible states. And even if all the particles did move in the same direction, the odds are *very* high that they would do so by an imperceptible amount.

And of course, no one is absolutely sure that the mathematical model includes all the constraints of physical reality.

Noggin

The meaning of life is 42 because it just is. Settled.

az

*also rolls eyes*

for 1 million coin tosses that something like 1/(2^1000000) small number!

anyawy...

if something supernatural was just a random bunch of atoms that happen to be randomly making it... then if its ever happened its only ever happened once...

"Angry as ever, I'm afraid - just read a bit of one of the Narnia books to my little sister. I used to love those books, before I discovered that they were allegory - now they just anger me."

I agree. I used to really like "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" before I realized what it was supposed to be an analogy for.

"It's statistics, Malaclypse. According to QM what happens to an individual particle is random (within certain statistical constraints). So, in theory, they *could* all move randomly in the same direction. But of course there are a *lot* of atoms. (What for instance are the odds of a hundred million coin tosses in a row all coming out heads? And that's a very small number with only two possible states. And even if all the particles did move in the same direction, the odds are *very* high that they would do so by an imperceptible amount."

"And of course, no one is absolutely sure that the mathematical model includes all the constraints of physical reality."

That's my understanding of the subject, too. Anything is possible, but things violating classical physics on the macroscopic scale are very highly improbable. However, given enough paralell universes, everything will happen somewhere, even those things involving macroscopic violations of classical physics.

highly improbable gets a new meaning.

if it violates physics then somewhere in an infinite universe,something infinitely large must have been made and we'd know...

The meaning of life is Worshipping the Great and Exalted Fish.
Hail the Fish.