Posted on 11/17/2003 6:02:20 AM PST by Tribune7
The idea that he is a devotee of reason seeing through the outdated superstitions of other, lesser beings is the foremost conceit of the proud atheist. This heady notion was first made popular by French intellectuals such as Voltaire and Diderot, who ushered in the so-called Age of Enlightenment.
That they also paved the way for the murderous excesses of the French Revolution and many other massacres in the name of human progress is usually considered an unfortunate coincidence by their philosophical descendants.
The atheist is without God but not without faith, for today he puts his trust in the investigative method known as science, whether he understands it or not. Since there are very few minds capable of grasping higher-level physics, let alone following their implications, and since specialization means that it is nearly impossible to keep up with the latest developments in the more esoteric fields, the atheist stands with utter confidence on an intellectual foundation comprised of things of which he knows nothing.
In fairness, he cannot be faulted for this, except when he fails to admit that he is not actually operating on reason in this regard, but is instead exercising a faith that is every bit as blind and childlike as that of the most unthinking Bible-thumping fundamentalist. Still, this is not irrational, it is only ignorance and a failure of perception.
The irrationality of the atheist can primarily be seen in his actions – and it is here that the cowardice of his intellectual convictions is also exposed. Whereas Christians and the faithful of other religions have good reason for attempting to live by the Golden Rule – they are commanded to do so – the atheist does not.
In fact, such ethics, as well as the morality that underlies them, are nothing more than man-made myth to the atheist. Nevertheless, he usually seeks to live by them when they are convenient, and there are even those, who, despite their faithlessness, do a better job of living by the tenets of religion than those who actually subscribe to them.
Still, even the most admirable of atheists is nothing more than a moral parasite, living his life based on borrowed ethics.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
So, the bosons are good predictors of degrees of attraction or repulsion. But apparently, they don't hold the clue to how mass is introduced at a subatomic level. Enter the elusive Higgs boson.
In the ideal world of the Standard Model, the bosons would be massless. They would simply be the carriers of forces-electromagnetism, strong nuclear interactions, weak nuclear interactions, etc. But they are not massless. Two of the bosons (Z and W) are hefty. What's the deal? Also, the Standard Model fails to explain primary forces affecting atoms. The model does not include gravity, for starters. And why the variations in masses of particles-and the masses of the force carriers, the bosons? In addition, calculations derived from our assumptions about the Standard Model don't accurately predict events occurring at very high energies. For instance, the Model reports that some events will happen more than 100% of the time.
The Higgs boson is the factor that will make all things right with the Standard Model. Right? Well, presumably. The Higgs factor would explain why "massless" forces might not be massless and why particles' masses vary widely, apparently without logic. If there were a Higgs particle, for instance, it might pair up with other particles or accompany particular kinds of forces. Like lint, it would be potentially ubiquitous but selective. Trouble is, the Higgs factor might not be a particle at all.
Physicists tend to explain the Higgs as either (a) a "field" or "mechanism" or (b) a particle. Remember that in quantum eletrodynamics, the same entity can be a wave (or as a series of waves, a "field") or a particle. The Higgs, too, might have options.
Visualizing the Higgs as a particle has problems. How would a Higgs add mass to another particle? Is mass an added property, like a wad of bubble gum stuck to the side of a tennis ball? That hardly seems likely, but it is hard to imagine a Higgs particle adding mass to other particles without imagining some sort of aggregation. Furthermore, if the Higgs is the contributor of mass, it presumably must have enormous mass itself. If it has such mass, why hasn't it been observed already? Even nimbler, lighter, and shorter-lived particles might be elusive but they have been observed. Why not the densest thing in the universe?
As a field, perhaps the Higgs makes more sense. The Higgs needs to provide a theoretical mass value when it is factored into other equations/reactions. Whereas a Higgs particle doesn't contribute anything to calculations requiring mass, a Higgs field does. Imagine that a particle gained its mass, not by aggregation with another particle, but by interacting with a force field. David Miller, of University College, London, explains the field/interaction idea this way: "In order to give particles mass, a background field is invented which becomes locally distorted whenever a particle moves through it. The distortion-the clustering of the field around the particle-generates the particle's mass." The idea comes from the physics of solids. Imagine a solid, say, our tennis ball, contains a lattice of positively charged crystal atoms. When an electron moves through the lattice, its atoms are attracted to it, causing the electron's effective mass to be as much as 40 times bigger than the mass of the electron when it is free of the field. Crystal lattices carry waves without needing electrons to move through them, and these waves even behave as though they are particles. "The postulated Higgs field in the vacuum," Miller conjectures, "is a sort of hypothetical lattice which fills our Universe."
Simon Hands at CERN provides an alternative analogy. The Higgs field is like the grain in a plank of wood. "The direction of the grain is undetectable, and only becomes important once the Higgs' interactions with other particles are taken into account. For instance, all particles called vector bosons can travel with the grain...." In this case, the same particle travelling one direction (say, "with the grain") would have one identity-a photon, perhaps-and travelling in the other direction ("against the grain") another identity-perhaps a Z or W boson. The Higgs field, then, could actually simplify the Standard Model by making mass an outcome of the activity of particles rather than one of their unchanging characteristics.
Physicists' energetic defense of their informed beliefs might remind us of the story of the blind men and the elephant. For lack of proper instruments (eyes), the blind men guessed about the elephant's appearance based on the information available to them. So it is with physicists and the Higgs factor. "Take a poll in, say, the Fermilab cafeteria on what exactly the Higgs is," writes David Kestenbaum, "and you could very well start a food fight." Is it a field? Is it a split-second pairing of particles? Is it a major flaw in the Standard Model, requiring many more particles to be named? The instrumentation is vital for discovering the links and finding experimental evidence of the mass-factor, whatever it is. A new generation of colliders may well provide the answers in the next few years. CERN's LEP collider, limited by the energies it deals in, could identify a "light" Higgs factor. The facilities at Fermilab could detect a somewhat "heavier" Higgs, and CERN's Large Hadron Collider, which will replace Fermilab's Tevatron as the highest-energy accelerator in the world, would probably be able to identify an even "heavier" Higgs.
Nobody is saying the calculations are a "disproof" of abiogenesis. What we are saying is that the probability is so low that you need a faith reaching irrationality to believe in abiogenesis.
The "disproof" of abiogenesis would be the scientific axiom that life can only come from life. But emotion often trumps reason so there are those who insist that abiogenesis is the proper "scientific" approach to creation.
Faith, btw, is not irrational if one recognizes it as faith.
2) I responded directly to them (in plain English) demonstrating that they were not addressing modern dynamic abiogenesis at all, using this discussion as a source.
How do you know?
3) Alamo-girl refuses to reply to me directly. She just changes the subject to a maze of subsequent esoteric jargon riddled theories .
She did not. You asked her to summarize some very difficult concepts and she did, rather well, actually. You're the one who said you didn't want to undertake "this journey".
Alamo-girl wont explain it.
She explained it as best as you can understand it. You have to be willing to do work yourself, you know.
I myself would not steer people to that article. I wish I had time to critique it in detail.
Since A-G is not speaking to you -- properly so, I might add, do your pointless insult-- I'll link you to Post 817 which makes the discussion even more clear.
Is that not redundant?
Interesting point Tom. Are you fanatically devoted to any values?
After pondering this depth for 800-plus posts, I think we can safely say yes. :-)
I can't say that my values are contrary to reason, either.
Concerning the "devoid of self-interest" and "detrimental to the claims of self-preservation" how long do you figure on preserving yourself?
[2]The oldest arguments of the Talk Origin posters concern themselves with the chemical environment – they are not talking about the information content. Thus, they are not “on the same page” with Yockey, Rocha, Pattee, von Neumann, etc."
1)The improvability calculations by Yokey and Hoyle that Alamo-girl promotes assume abiogenesis is “happenstance” rather than a dynamic process.
2)The “talk origin posters” don’t dispute those information content numbers and mention the “chemical environment” only to demonstrate that “Happenstance” is not abiogenesis.
Alamo girl thinks this is somehow “not on the same page”? Arguing against “happenstance” and calling it an argument against abiogenesis in this day is just a mischaracterization of abiogenesis, nothing complex about that...
I can’t imagine how something so simple could escape her. It doesn’t require a complex analysis or history. If her refusal to address it on any other terms is not obfuscation, please suggest an alternative explanation.
Make that 40%. Perjury is bearing false witness. At least I've always assumed that.
Because it's not a fallacy. The Framers -- all of them (including the deists, Franklin and Jefferson, notwithstanding their attraction to Enlightenment perspectives [Jefferson was in Paris at the time of the Philadelphia Convention, but had been able to correspond]) -- were firmly planted in the Judeo-Christian world view. You have only to listen to them speak, in their writings, to know that.
That is to say, they believed in God, the creator of the world and of man; that God "created all men equal," vesting in them reason and free will; and that God is the source of men's inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property (or "happiness").
To doubt this is tantamount to saying Jefferson was a crafty, calculating liar when he penned the DoI, that this key document is a tissue of lies....
These insights motivated the Framers' desire to create a system of ordered liberty and equal justice under law; for nothing else would be appropriate to God-given human dignity.
Further, they clearly believed that the Ten Commandments and the Two Great Laws of the Christian dispensation were divinely communicated to man, and that they were, in fact, the moral law designed by God to serve mankind, according suitably to his divinely created nature. These ideas are implicit in the philosophy of the Constitution itself.
But if you want to engage in revisionist history, don't let me stop you. You wouldn't be the first, or the last.
Very good. We are making progress. We can now all agree that abiogenesis is impossible by happenstance.
Now, what is this dynamic process you are taking about?
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