Eh, i’m not entirely sure persecuting your own kind necessarily means you can’t be one of them too.
Really? I didn’t get that impression. Where did you hear this?
Yes, searched for to no avail. http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/HistTopics/Fermat’s_last_theorem.html
“It has the dubius distinction of being the theorem with the largest number of published false proofs. For example, over 1000 false proofs were published between 1908 and 1912.” How is that progress? (I have a wonderful proof that 4 is not divisible by 2. What? I’m wrong? But if enough people generate false proofs will you start to believe the proposition?)
Ok, the proposition is: x^n + y^n = z^n has no (non-zero) integer solutions when n>2.
It was more than 100 years before anyone had proven it had no solutions when n=3. Just an infinite number to go… pretty good data set there… It was almost another hundred years before any major progress was made. (Sophie Germain showed that there were no solutions for n<100 in the special case where none of x, y, and z are divisible by n. After this Dirichlet was finally able to prove it for n=5. And it wasn’t long before it was proven for n<100.) And it’s only at this point that you can start thinking you have anywhere near a good data set.
Just to give you a small indication of the magnitude of the problem, you realize that the pythagorean theorem, (x^2 + y^2 = z^2,) had been studied for a couple thousand years. Even before pythagoras, a babylonian tablet exists with a set of solutions to this, the nature of which indicate the author had an algorithm for generating them, and no one, to this day, has been able to recreate that algorithm. We don’t even fully understand the case we know there are solutions to. How do we know what is going to be required for there to be solutions?
(emphasis mine)
even though, as I previously said:
How is that not faith?
Because it’s not based on nothing; faith is. Because it is disprovable; faith ignores disproof. Faith is an empty assertion, and denies any disproof of those assertions. That’s why I called it a form of insanity earlier; it denies reality, and makes it’s own version up as the believer goes along.
Are you having trouble differenciating between faith based on past history and available evidence, and blind faith? You keep bringing up these matematical theories as if people are accepting them for no reason whatsoever, and it’s been shown repeatedly that this is not true. There is evidence of varying degrees to examine. As far as Fermat’s last theorem is concerned, there was no blind faith involved-there were those never believed he had solved the problem, and those that believed, based on Fermat’s past history, that he probably had and went looking for it.
Can you come up with one single example of blind faith in science? If not, then please stop using the word as if it means the same thing in the scientific community as it does in the religious community. It annoys me almost as much as people thinking that a scientific “theory” is nothing more than a guess or supposition.
I got that impression from my reading of the problem pre-Wiles. Although looking into it now, I overstated it - I’m sure there were/are a few people out there who think that Fermat really did have an elegant proof. In my opinion, that’s very implausible.
Did you read what I wrote? I was saying that a set of numbers that would solve the equation in FLT, and thus disprove it, had been searched for for centuries and not found, and that the inability to find a disproof, after a long time, is evidence that the conjecture is likely true.
The idea of false proofs doesn’t matter one whit. In fact, 1000 false proofs lend credibility to the idea that Fermat was simply mistaken.
This is yet another good illustration of the difference between math and science. Proofs don’t exist in science; however, disproofs exist in both arenas. In science, if an idea withstands repeated attempts to disprove it, then it starts to be tentatively accepted as true. From this point of view, FLT was widely accepted as true because no one had been able to find an example that would falsify it. This is a very different concept from a mathematical proof. In science, everything we think is true is just like the pre-Wiles FLT (except without the hope of a formal proof ever coming).
There are two definitions of “faith,” and I think you’re not realizing that. One is like trust - it’s based on a past history of performance. I have faith that my wife will not kill me in my sleep. The other definition of faith is “belief without evidence,” and that’s the one used in a religious context. Religious faith is belief without evidence, and that’s what a believer means when he says, typically after having to admit that he has nothing, that “you just have to have faith.”
I’m not sure what you’re refering to, but there are plenty of known algorithms for generating Pythagorean triples, including this one that goes back to Euclid:
a = m[sup]2[/sup] – n[sup]2[/sup], b = 2mn, c = m[sup]2[/sup] + n[sup]2[/sup] (m > n > 0 any two integers)
You don’t even need an algorithm:
[2n(n+1)][sup]2[/sup] + (2n+1)[sup]2[/sup] = [2n(n+1)+1][sup]2[/sup]
for n = any integer.
This generates:
0[sup]2[/sup] + 1[sup]2[/sup] = 1[sup]2[/sup]
4[sup]2[/sup] + 3[sup]2[/sup] = 5[sup]2[/sup]
12[sup]2[/sup] + 5[sup]2[/sup] = 13[sup]2[/sup]
24[sup]2[/sup] + 7[sup]2[/sup] = 25[sup]2[/sup]
40[sup]2[/sup] + 9[sup]2[/sup] = 41[sup]2[/sup] etc.
I worked this out in high school.
Marcuse et al do not have to be “great understanders of the world and people” to make the connection between Marxism and the collapse of Christianity; they only needed to have experience as proponents of Marxism, and they had that in spades. Think of it this way. Obviousy Bill Belichick did not accomplish as much with this year’s Patriots team as he hoped and expected, yet he’s certainly knows the team’s playbook better than anyone else. That’s because he has the most experience with it.
Ok, let’s apply that definition to debates on this board. Der Trihs in the “God as Parent” thread claims that all people until quite recently and almost all people alive today were/are unhappy all the time. Thus, by your reasoning, virtually anyone who ever was happy was “attacking” Ter Trihs, and most people still are.
Or consider a recent thread by Stoid asserting that no one can control their own sexual desires. By your definition, anyone who does control their sexual desires is “attacking” Stoid. Indeed, as I argued in that thread, everyone controls their sexual desires at least somewhat, so Stoid is apparently attacking himself. (DerTrihs, on the other hand, appears to obey his own command to be permanently unhappy, even if no one else does.)
The real problem here is that you’re not arguing against me. Your arguing against the English language, every dictionary, and everyone who speaks it. You cannot “attack” someone by thinking thoughts about them. Attacking is an action taken.
Well then, if your case rests on that, let’s debate it. You claim that “religion is just a power-hungry empire”. What evidence do you offer to support that claim? And we can surely agree that the following are not acceptable evidence:
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Insults directed at me, at other religious people, or at religion in general.
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Claims made, which cannot be substantiated with fact.
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Incidents of one religious person or a small number of people acting “power-hungry”.
So in short, you’ve claimed that all religions at all times were acting together to seize power. What evidence do you offer to suppor this claim? Keep in mind that you need to offer a proof which includes every single one.
He didn’t make that claim.
These statements are not equivalent.
Eh?
He said that religion was a power-hungry empire. If he wanted to say that it was many different power-hungry empires, he should have said so.
And if you can’t argue against his point without using the term “in other words”, you are not arguing with him. Was there some reason you couldn’t use the words he posted?
Actually he said “it has demonstrated in numerous ways on numerous occasions that it is just a power-hungry empire like any other, god or no god.”
Which can be read as “(it has demonstrated in numerous ways on numerous occasions) (that it is just a power-hungry empire like any other, god or no god).”, or it can be read "(it has demonstrated (in numerous ways on numerous occasions that it is just a power-hungry empire like any other, god or no god)).
The second reading does not support your translations.
Well then, since I didn’t use term “in other words”, what do you have to complain about? As you can see, in post 190 I quoted the exact words of CosmicRelief, which were “a power-hungry empire”. I then asked him to defend his words. So to answer your questions, I am arguing with him as directly as possible, and I did use the words he posted. (Assuming that he is a male. If he is actually a she, I apologize.)
If he intended the second interpretation then the modifier “in numerous ways on numerous occasions” was misplaced. He should have written “It has demonstrated that in numerous ways on numerous occasions it is just a power-hungry empire like any other, god or no god,” or “it has demonstrated that it is just a power-hungry empire like any other in numerous ways on numerous occasions.”
And that’s our grammar lesson for today.
You’re right. You didn’t say “in other words”-you said “so in short” which means exactly the same thing in the context you used. You rephrased what he said to make it a more extreme statement, and then you argued against the extreme statement that you created in the first place.
And while I’ll freely admit that he could have probably phrased the sentence better, it’s still was a pretty weak point for you to argue about, ignoring the entire rest of his post, including the obvious main argument of it.
Sorry, but rephrasing someone’s statement to make it something you have a ready-made argument for really ticks me off. This happened in another thread to me, where I said that I was against physical violence, and that I wouldn’t want someone to engage in it on my behalf. Almost immediately, someone declared that I must be against all law enforcement, because jail was a type of violence, and I was called a hypocrite. Taking someone’s points, carrying them to extremes, then arguing against those extremes is dishonest, in my opinion.