Gus Mayo you should read some books by and or about Richard Feynman. There is one story about him trying to understand what would happen if you put one of those spinning sprinklers underwater and reversed the flow. He spends days trying to work out the answer, one day it remains still the next he is convinced it will spin backwards, he ends up having to resort to experiment. At no point does he resort to “faith” in anything.
Regarding atheism and faith, you refer to several common beliefs or ideas put forth by believers that have probably been countered in this thread but I am still not sure you completely got it (I could be wrong myself) so
Atheism, there is no evidence for god therefore I don’t believe in god (and therefore god did not create the universe) again no faith required.
agnostic there could be god(s) but we cant know so god may or may not have created the universe. no faith required, no evidence to support this statement but no claims are made either.
the unicorn farter, The IPU farted and thus began the universe and all things in it. This is a statement is pure faith as it both lacks evidence and makes a claim about the nature of the universe.
I have faith in a god. He’s the unmoved mover, not your god. He created your god. Your god worships him, sacrifices stars to him. He lets your god get on with the little things like worlds and galaxies and stuff while he takes care of the big things like physics and the multiverse. There used to be a lot of gods, but he had to kill some of them cuz some of them tried to overthrow him. They were dicks. I know cuz he told me.
Iirc it stayed still, when water is pushed out its moving in a stream in one direction, but when pulled in it comes from all directions around the nozzle not just from the front.
Thanks! You’ve saved me weeks of cogitation, which would result in no definitive answer without experimental data, and I don’t have the resources needed to perform the experiment.
… but that ‘explanation’ is probably (almost certainly) wrong, for all the reasons that make it a ‘hard problem’ to begin with. It can’t suck from behind itself. The less it depends on ‘off-axis’ flow, the less that off-axis flow matters. In a manner that drops off. Exponentially, according to anyone who claims it matters.
Yeah. My point was that it’s such a hard problem that only experiment will resolve it. And only on an Ad Hoc basis. And it won’t tell you why it works that way.
I had to look up the history of cold fusion and of continental drift, thanks for your explination.
I think I’m on board with, at least, the absence of faith in science…
Did some reading on Feynman and his work. You, know, I’m never ashamed to admit that I don’t know something, but when it comes to things like the fact that I’d never heard of him before, it always humbles me when I don’t know that I don’t know. Know what I mean?
Thanks for the reference…
I wanted to swing back around to this… I would agree that the difference is in the attitude, but I’d differentiate further with:
Faith: Belief without adequate proof
Blind faith: Belief without adequate evidence. (Or maybe belief in the face of contrary evidence or contrary proof)
I have been on this board for 13 years (!!!) and these guys have taught me a ton of stuff regarding anything and everything. I have been humbled more times than I can count by the folks here. You seem to be seriously interested in learning as opposed to just posting your position and then sticking to your guns so let me drop you a couple of links that may short cut the learning process. (if you are interested that is)
I recommend one a day or one a week or just jump on that wikitrain and ride that bitch to the end. If you haven’t studied cognitive bias this will probably shock and educate the hell out of you. I refer to this list as the owners manual for anyone whos skull contains a human brain.
Much like the above cognitive bias list this one is all about argument/debate. This one is pretty essential if you don’t want these guys constantly calling you on your faulty BS. I really wish both of these had been available to me back when I joined.
There’s no ‘good’ way to differentiate the two - and we all color our definition of ‘faith’ a bit depending on the context of the word and the person we’re referring to… all religious faith is by definition, ‘blind’ as there is nothing other than the faith of others to build it on - I just give a person who has studied/thought it thru more ‘cred’ than the average bible thumper.
Maybe -
Faith = belief without evidence/proof
Blind Faith = belief without evidence/proof or thought.
Thats why I said earlier it speaks more to the ‘person’s attitude’ than to the quality of the belief itself - its not really meant as an ‘insult’ - but it certainly can seem that way - the person holding the ‘blind faith’ will usually see it as a strength -
Faith == belief without evidence/proof (I believe in X because a,b,c where a, b and c are usually subjective bits)
‘Blind Faith’ == belief without evidence/proof or thought - there is no questioning it - they simply ‘believe’ and cannot explain it (or don’t care to).
There is a field in the deep water Gulf of Mexico named Blind Faith. I have a colleague who was part of the original development team and enjoyed telling people she drilled wells on “Blind Faith.” There are a few other fields with musical references -Tubular Bells, Genesis.
