Thursday: Hili dialogue

October 24, 2024 • 4:19 am

Meanwhile, in Dobrzyn, Hili has grasped a fundamental truth:

Hili: History is happening in front of our eyes.
A: What do you mean?
Hili: That not everything is clearly visible.
 

Hili: Historia dzieje się na naszych oczach.
Ja: Co chcesz przez to powiedzieć?
Hili: Że nie wszystko dokładnie widać.

23 thoughts on “Thursday: Hili dialogue”

  3. Guys!

    Colin Wright asks a question/poll everyone here will want to read :

    “Do you believe that life evolved by an entirely natural process?

    Please explain your answer in the comments.”

    x.com/swipewright/status/1849303779096555561?s=46

    … I tried but couldn’t summon a satisfactory reply!… of course, I refused to simply say “yes”, but that’s no fun!

    And I’m all out of exclamation marks!

    Or are they points?

      1. I know, right?

        Perhaps

        Alchemical

        But not supernatural … though it is defined in relationship with “natural”…

        Pseudoscientific

        …. the demarcation problem comes to mind…

        “The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it.”

        -Neil DeGrasse Tyson
        —From Real Time with Bill Maher, 2011-02-04

        1. Cannot recall exactly, but in one of Jerry’s or Dawkins’ books perhaps we are told something like one believes IN religion, but one believes science.

          2. I’m not sure…. I’ve heard Christians say they believe in God and that they accept the teachings of Jesus and the precepts of their particular sect, but I’ve never heard one say he believes in religion or even in Christianity. A belief in something is a belief that it exists, like Santa Claus, or souls, or the Power of Prayer. The existence of Christianity or religion is an established fact, like sexual attraction or a dislike of Brussels sprouts.

            On the other hand I’ve heard many people including myself say that they believe in evolution. Maybe professional scientists studying a topic don’t put it this way but I think laymen would say that from the teaching they’ve had, the reading and reasoning they’ve done they’ve come to accrete the concept of evolution into a logically based belief….that in principle could be proved wrong but which they are provisionally willing to accept as true (which last makes it different from religious belief.)

            A belief in evolution simply means that one believes, subject to new information, that what the theory says about how we came to be is true. From a linguistic view, although of course not from a cognitive mechanism, this is analogous to a belief in intelligent design. I’d even go so far to say that yes I do believe in science generally — the scientific method specifically — as the best, eventually reliable way (because it corrects error) to find out the truth of the universe. (My faith in medical science is being tested by gender shenanigans. The clock for correcting error is running, guys.)

            Perhaps there are two senses of “believing in” operating here: “Believing in” in the sense that something exists beyond the reach of one’s unassisted senses that might or might not be subject to refutation, like “cadaveric particles” (later found to exist as streptococci), phlogiston (debunked), or an immortal soul (not debunkable), and “believing in” something in the sense of accepting its power to explain or do good in the world. Canadians “believed in” Justin Trudeau in 2015. Now they don’t, but his existence is not in doubt. People who believe in God, I think, believe in Him in both senses, in His existence and in His power to explain and do good to His believers and smite their enemies. Perhaps that is the difference.

          3. A variation which I like is that one can believe in religion, but one should accept the conclusions from science.
            This highlights that accepting something means that you weighed the various arguments first.

        2. Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away” – Philip K. Dick

      3. At first, I thought there are only two diametrically opposed possibilities: Supernatural causation or natural

        But then, there’s actually a third possibility. This is related to the ‘scientific’ problem that torments me even more than the question of how life originated, which is the question of how the UNIVERSE originated – i.e., how everything that there is, from laws of nature to particles came into being.

        I certainly reject any idea that any sort of supernatural entity created the universe or even exists. But, in theory, you could posit a God who creates the universe and then steps back and let events unspool as they will, without any intervention thereafter. In other words, in this scenario, God does not create life; he rather, creates a universe in which it is possible for life to evolve ‘naturally’ via the chance formation of molecules that can self-replicate.

        1. What caused the Big Bang? We don’t know, but the model that I like best is called Eternal Inflation. Here is a very short but clear summary of what that is:
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB8nBZk-NuM
          What isn’t done here, though, is a description of the evidence that inflation governed the early universe. In short, on very large scales, the universe is incredibly uniform in temperature and in distribution of galaxies. Early models of the Big Bang say that that cannot happen. So the solution has been that the early universe inflated for a time at incredibly high speed, smoothing out the temperature and distribution of matter. The rate of inflation then dropped precipitously, giving the slower expanding universe that we see now.
          Eternal Inflation is an extrapolation that suggests that inflation is happening all the time, and that bubble universes are dropping out of inflation here and there. So there are other universes outside of our own — a multiverse.
          An appeal of this model is that it calls upon laws of physics, and argues that the universe had a natural and law-abiding origin and not a supernatural origin.

          1. Alas, as I understand it, in the theory of eternal inflation, inflation is only eternal into the future, NOT the past. From that it follows that inflation had a beginning. Per Alan Guth:

            > The name eternal inflation … could be phrased more accurately as future-eternal inflation.

            > … all eternally inflating models “start with a state in which there are no pocket universes at all, just pure repulsive-gravity material filling space.

            Thus, rather than solving the ‘how did it all begin’ problem, the theory of eternal inflation just moves the ‘beginning’ from the Big Bang to an unimaginably distant time before then.

        2. The question then is, if god is, where did god come from?
          To me, you are back at square one and no closer to an answer but for science, there is no evidence of a god.
          God is a cultural phenomenon for better and for worse. It survives on human indoctrination, gullibility and misinformation.😁
          Whatever was here before the existance of matter and therefore everything we see, is a natural phenomena and I’m good with that.
          As an aside. There is a few books on multiverse and before the big bang written by reputable scientist, tread carefully but it is one hellofaway to stretch your imagination and awe of the natual world.

Comments are closed.