New Atheist Billboard in San Diego Urges 'Personal Relationship With Reality'

What I meant to lnk to earlier, but the site went down:


Hawking Gives Up




David Gross has in the past invoked the phrase “never, never, never give up”, attributed to Churchill, to describe his view about claims that one should give up on the traditional goals of fundamental physics in favor of anthropic arguments invoking a multiverse. Steven Hawking has a new book out this week, called The Grand Design and written with Leonard Mlodinow, in which he effectively announces that he has given up:


"We seem to be at a critical point in the history of science, in which we must alter our conception of goals and of what makes a physical theory acceptable. It appears that the fundamental numbers, and even the form, of the apparent laws of nature are not demanded by logic or physical principle. The parameters are free to take on many values and the laws to take on any form that leads to a self-consistent mathematical theory, and they do take on different values and different forms in different universes."

Thirty years ago, in his inaugural lecture as Lucasian professor, Hawking took a very different point of view. He argued that we were quite close to a final unified theory, based on N=8 supergravity, with a 50% chance of complete success by the year 2000. A few years after this, N=8 supergravity fell into disfavor when it was shown that supersymmetry was not enough to cancel possible ultraviolet divergences in the theory.


People are still trying to decipher the nature of M-theory, but that may not be possible. It could be that the physicist’s traditional expectation of a single theory of nature is untenable, and there exists no single formulation. It might be that to describe the universe, we have to employ different theories in different situations

The book ends with the argument that
•Our TOE must contain gravity.
•Supersymmetry is required to have a finite theory of gravity.
•M-theory is the most general supersymmetric theory of gravity.

ergo


M-theory is the unified theory Einstein was hoping to find. The fact that we human beings – who are ourselves mere collections of fundamental particles of nature – have been able to come this close to an understanding of the laws governing us and our universe is a great triumph.

This isn’t exactly an air-tight argument…



http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=3141


Where it wound up.....a big, fat... ?

 

Two wrongs make a right, eh? Which bible passage is that?

 

He's sued to attempt to have monuments to 9/11 and memorials to veterans desecrated because they had crosses and claims this was somehow 'imposing religion' on him.

Plus his organization was founded by scumbags, some of the original members of American Atheists were convicted murderers - read about Marilyn O'Hair.

 

I wasn't being literal but the fact is Silverman's a lowlife - and any atheist openly associating him is no different than a Christian openly associating with someone like Terry Jones or Fred Phelps.

 

Read about Paul.

Seriously... polytheists and atheists are reviled and persecuted and murdered through the talmud the bible and the qu'ran.

It never clicked before WHY you are so anti-jew... but that desire to protect the qu'ran's reverence for Jesus as a prophet kinda did.

I would be mushrikeen to you.

 

In an ideal world, this post would end the thread.

Well played.

 

No. He isn't with me. I side with science... a woman's reproductive "choice" overrides my child's right to life at a point. We can debate that point. I am not unreasonable. "Life" by any scientific definition begins when an organism has its own specific DNA. That IS life. Amoebas are alive. People are sentient... but babies... that is a different thing even by our standards newborns aren't sentient. They are not aware of their existence, just needs... like... a bee. At some point women must bear the burden of their decisions, legally, as are men. Women have several choices after the fact, every day after the fact... men... not so much. You want to suggest that it is not a person until there is brain activity... I will draw that line there as well... though I think that you are winning. It is conceit to me. Beyond that... he ain't with me.

 

It told you EXACTLY what it was! It said "atheism" was the personal relationship with reality!

A personal relationship with reality, is an alteration of the religious slogan, "a personal relationship with God".. This is used in order to be emotive and suggest that the theistic view is not reality... That's the old word twist used as an insult, an age old form of insult. Now these words, "myths", "cults", "invisible friends", are all used to enflame, and ridicule.. They are selected to be emotive towards this end.. This is obvious.. Deny it all you want but the condescending and self rightous way these atheists try to promote their agenda is extremely apparent. These atheists are not trying to open people's eyes in a constructive manner.. You don't need to have a degree in psychology to know that if you want to change someone's mind about something, then don't use ridicule, because this makes people automatically defensive, and if they were closed minded it will only make them even more so. This kind of (*)(*)(*)(*) won't accomplish anything and they are wasting their time and money, unless of course the agenda is to annoy people.

Speaking of double standards.. You deny that these are attempts to annoy people, yet Christianity has "annoy people" as a mandate. Please quote the "mandate" you refer to.. I'm curious to know how this atheist propaganda campaign differs.

What is the motive anyway? If not converting people, and not annoying people.. You've still not answered. You left that very important question dangling.

Holdup.. Don't backtrack... I asked, why can't people just leave each other alone to believe what they want, in peace.. You answered, "Because Christian beliefs mandate..." THAT was your answer. Don't deny it. You also tried to accuse me of having double standards, but that doesn't answer my question.

Would you like to stick with that answer, or would you like to provide a different answer?

And there's no reason for you to try to "infer" my motives.. My motives are EXPLICITLY stated.. I wanted EVERYBODY to stop the ridicule, stop the hate, and leave each other to believe what they want in peace.. Atheists and theists alike.. There are no double standards.. I never made an exemption for religious people to resort to ridicule or change the minds of atheists.. I actually condemned such slander against atheists at the start of this thread. At least have the decency to read my posts so you don't have to accuse me of having standards I never claimed to have, and accuse me of believing things by implication in which I EXPLICITLY said otherwise on MULTIPLE occasions.

I asked you the intent.. What is the intent?

My faith is not threatened in the least.

Ridicule is not positive. You can promote atheism without trying to ridicule religious belief.

Exactly.So then there's no reason you need to do a www search for it is there?

I never said anything like this.. Some of the anti-atheist billboards are extremely insulting.. Do you mind not making up my beliefs and arguments on my behalf?

Oh bull(*)(*)(*)(*).. I stated MULTIPLE times in this thread that we are all in the same boat with NOT KNOWING where the universe came from.. Stop lying about my arguments.

THAT is not what I claimed was insulting.. Again, stop making strawman arguments.

By the way, if you want to talk about willingness to listen, I have read each and every last post on this thread, word for word. YOU obviously haven't.. YOU are the one not doing the listening.. If you were, you wouldn't need to have the completely wrong idea of what my message is.

?????

Show us the numbers please, and where you got them.

I have been to many meetings of both and I will tell you this is nonsense.. They are not mired in "God" they use a "higher power" for some steps, which does NOT have to be a god or diety. It can just as easily be your sponsor, your family, reality if you like that idea, whatever works for you. It just means a power outside yourself. It's based on the idea that we can't quit on our own and need help. These organizations are funded by donations from its members. If you wanted to use these organizations for your argument you should have done some research first.

They reach out to those in crisis!! DUH!! It's called helping people!! If youth are in crisis they help them too! What I'm unaware about is what exactly you mean by "targetting".

I didn't say you, did I?

It doesn't. I already told you it doesn't. STOP LYING ABOUT MY ARGUMENTS AND BELIEFS.

I didn't say you give a (*)(*)(*)(*).. However people made forum threads and billboards about it, so obviously they must care.

Why don't you stop. READ THE THREAD, and then try again. Read all my posts, understand where I'm coming from, and if you still disagree, only THEN respond.

 

As a real atheist i find militant atheism is quite ridiculous. Being in tune with reality has nothing to do with putting up stupid billboards. Atheism doesn't need to be preached to people, and that quite frankly is the beauty of atheism. Too bad some "atheists" these days behave and think like fundamentalists.

 

As usual the atheists presume to know what reality is. They've never demonstrated however, that they know.
They can keep the billboard and perhaps that money spent on advising others would have better spent in some positive
societal action.

 

Really? Animals know right from wrong? What makes you think this and how is this demonstrated?

 

Animals can tell right from wrong

Trying doing some research.

 

You go first. I see absolutely no reason to think or believe animals have a sense of right and wrong...unless you think a dog that will not crap on the rug because the owner gets angry is somehow displaying a sense of right and wrong, in which case you'd be wrong again.

 

Animals can tell right from wrong <---- You see this? This is called a link. You click on it, then a web page pops up, then YOUR READ IT! DOH!

 

No, it absolutely cannot. Science is all about describing the natural world as it is. You can't get an ought from an is.

- - - Updated - - -

Irrelevant. It's not about about who's moral and who isn't moral. It's about whence morality derives.

 

That article doesn't prove what you think it proves, so it's not going to convince anybody of anything. Hopefully, one day you'll realize that.

 

That is the core question. If christians kept their myths to themselves, instead of trying to force the rest of us to live according to their rules, we wouldn't even notice them.

 

I usually dismiss blanket statements about animals not knowing right from wrong or animals don't have emotions or animals don't ponder their own existence or any other baseless statements like that.

We're not psychic.. None of us know what animals are thinking, or what their thought process is.

We can only make a guess by observing their behavior.

Whatever the case may be, I doubt it's universal across the spectrum.

Life is extremely diverse, and I'm sure the thinking patterns are equally diverse.. I doubt an elephant thinks about the world the same as a rat the same as a dolphin the same as a kangaroo the same as a dog etc.

 

You need instructions from a deity to know the difference between right and wrong?

 

In social psychology, yes you can.

 

Nope, Our American society is based on Laws and beliefs, rooted in the judeo christian tradition.

 

So you're in favor of laws that have no purpose aside from "Gawd said so"?

 

There is no such thing, this is a myth.

There are Christians.

And there are so called Jews.

The term that you use, is relatively modern, and I would go into the times lines, but there is no point.

Look for yourself, if you're interested in what is true, and what is not true.

 

Yeah, cheers, I looked him up, and spoke about him in 293 and 301.

My thoughts (and his hypocrisy) are all documented in those posts.

 

No thats your mindless assumption.

Please read the declaration of Independence and the Constitution.