@SGD Ah I think we are coming a bit closer together here, but you are backpeddling a bit.

There is a BIG difference between you telling me that it is MY job as a rational person to disprove the existance of God the Son and the Holy ghost, v. telling me that dark matter is unmeasurable.

You see, Dark Matter is based on actual calculations and rational deliberation which leads scientists to see that something is missing from their model. As it turns out, I'm willing to CONSIDER dark matter as a possibility because it is based on something thought out and observable (though itself it may not be). That said, I would not be surprised at all if it turns out to be bunk. But that's the great part of science, Dark Matter can turn out to be real or not real and NO SCIENTIST is going to FATWAH me for believing on either side. It's exactly as you say.

As for why religion needs to go, well it is exactly for the reason you state: they DO try to force their views on others. When Sarah Palin, champion of the religious nuts in this country, gets up and tells us that fruit fly research is "silly and pointless" I see that as highly dangerous and definitely something that needs to be addressed. Killing and threatening artists. Suicide Bombers, child-abuse cover-ups, intelligent design, Jesus camps, invading the west bank, female oppression, and good christians don't vote for Obama.... all great examples of how "good teachings" of a religion have been cast aside in favor of fear, hate mongering, and irrational behavior.

Religion has forced itself on human culture for all of our history and while some good has come of it, a great portion of the bad in the world can be traced back to someone listening to a magical being in their head (or as I often suspect, saying they do in order to sway uneducated masses).

So in conclusion, I think you are now a lot closer to me in what I mean (though I fall on the other side of the argument when it comes to the usefulness of religion), but I do think you backpedaled a bit. Dark Matter /= Jesus.

@ponceleon

First off, I'm wondering why you happen to think that I believe in a god or gods. No where in this thread have I stated that I'm religious. I simply think forcing opinions on other people is a bad idea--whether it's forcing others to believe in your religion or forcing others to give up their religion, as say China does. So maybe you might want to lay off the ad hominem attacks. Let's have a reasonable open dialogue, shall we?

Second, you entirely missed the point of my post. I'm not asking you to believe. You are free to look at the world around you and decide for yourself. My point was that the world around us can be interpreted in multiple ways. Take a roller coaster for instance. One person rides a roller coaster and is terrified. The person next to him is having a great time and loves it. Are roller coasters terrifying or fun? Science cannot help us answer this question. Both people experienced exactly the same event but interpret it in entirely separate ways. The best we can say is that some people find roller coasters scary and some people find them fun. What does this have to do with religion? So far, you have interpreted your experiences in this world to conclude there is no god or gods. That's fine! I don't have a problem with that. I have a problem with you demanding everyone else interpret their own experiences exactly as you do. You want scientific proof of god. Again, I have no problem with that (although I find your insistence on scientific proof kind of funny, since I don't require scientific proof to know that I am having fun on a roller coaster). That's your choice. But I don't think you have the right to take away the choice from everyone else in the process. Trying to do so would be as absurd as trying to force everyone in the world to like roller coasters.

Let's talk about Dawkins for a second. I think Dawkins does a disservice to atheists everywhere by lumping all religious people into one group. We call that "stereotyping." The stereotype that Dawkins uses is based on a conservative fundamentalist Islamic/Christian religious fanatic (the unthinking believer that I was talking about in previous posts). Since he is using a stereotype, he may as well be railing against [insert the ethnicity of your choice] and screaming about all the problems they cause. Now, certainly he has an eager audience--as do KKK leaders at most of their rallies. But he's doing nothing to make the world a more civil or peaceful place. In fact, he's simply polarizing it even more.

Why not Vishnu? I have no problem with people who worship Vishnu. Or Thor. Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Or the Tooth Fairy. The problem comes only when people try to impose their religion on others--and that is not something I am advocating. As I said above, I have a problem whenever anyone forces their opinion on others (as does Dawkins--it's something we agree on). So obviously I am against things like the forced inclusion of Creationism in textbooks. Or blasphemy laws. Or the discrimination against a particular group based on their religion (or lack thereof).

Sorry this post is getting so long. I'll wrap it up with this: I'm curious what your stance is on the existence of dark matter. Most astronomers believe in dark matter in spite of the fact there is no physical way to measureit. It's basically invisible. And yet current models of the structure of the universe require the existence of dark matter to work properly. You demand proof in order to believe in a god or gods. Well, there is no proof of dark matter--only speculation. And yet the scientific community generally has faith that it exists. How do you reconcile that?

Although I don't have any evidence of the existence of God or gods, science has ironically given us plenty of evidence for the benefits and evolutionary advantages of faith. Have a read.

The Evolutionary Advantages of Faith

So, your insistence on doing away with religion is actually quite amusing, as you would be fighting evolution apparently.

According to Wikipedia, I gather that the confirmation of Dark Energy makes the existence of Dark Matter very likely.>> ^direpickle:

>> ^Throbbin:
Right you are. Guess I bungled that in my glee.
Although I suppose the existence of the one all but confirms the existence of the other.>> ^direpickle:
It looks like this is a confirmation of Dark Energy and not Dark Matter. They're different things with unfortunately similar names.


I was really excited at the prospect of proof of dark matter! I'm less-excited by proof of dark energy, because that all but confirms a dismal end to the universe. Still, it's neat when science works. I'm not an astrophysicist, but I don't think the Dark Matter/Energy theories are related so that one implies the other. I could be wrong, though!


I know the sift boasts some experts in the field. What do you guys think?

>> ^Throbbin:

Right you are. Guess I bungled that in my glee.
Although I suppose the existence of the one all but confirms the existence of the other.>> ^direpickle:
It looks like this is a confirmation of Dark Energy and not Dark Matter. They're different things with unfortunately similar names.



I was really excited at the prospect of proof of dark matter! I'm less-excited by proof of dark energy, because that all but confirms a dismal end to the universe. Still, it's neat when science works. I'm not an astrophysicist, but I don't think the Dark Matter/Energy theories are related so that one implies the other. I could be wrong, though!

Right you are. Guess I bungled that in my glee.

Although I suppose the existence of the one all but confirms the existence of the other.>> ^direpickle:

It looks like this is a confirmation of Dark Energy and not Dark Matter. They're different things with unfortunately similar names.

It looks like this is a confirmation of Dark Energy and not Dark Matter. They're different things with unfortunately similar names.

You may also find this interesting: http://videosift.com/video/Sixty-Symbols-Dark-Matter

I was not referring to THE standard model. I said "its highly unlikely that a fundamental understanding of something is flawed because these standard models work very well with everything else." As in - What we understand of our models of general relativity, quantum mechanics, and so on. Through simulations and mathematics Dark Matter explains the phenomenons that we're observing, that cant be explained by what we currently directly understand of the world around us. The second part of all of this is to find it, or come up with another theory that explains this phenomenon. This all falls under the disciplines contained in Theoretical Physics.

Simply saying that it doesnt exist because your current understanding doesnt work in explaining everything is a bit close minded. There's a lot of things we dont understand, and science tries to explain it the best we can, with what we know. And when youre working in the cutting edge of theoretical physics, its trial and error.

There is a distinctly large difference between black holes and dark matter as they refer to being mathematical before observed. The idea of black holes arose out of the logical extrapolation of his pure concept. IE, this is what small "a" looks like, this is what medium "a" looks like, this is what large "a" looks like, therefor, this is what infinite "a" would look like.

Dark matter isn't like that at all. Dark matter is since this is what "a" looks like, and "a" does not sufficiently explain what is happening, we have to invent "b" to so that "a" still holds for all other cases where "a" does act as a sufficient explanation. This should be highly suspect.

I am actually surprised you bring up the standard model. As it stands, the standard model does not have anything to say about gravitation, at all. And the classical model has nothing to say about particles. It is PRECISELY these discrepancy (perhaps divergence is a better word) that makes me think it is in inability to explain the fundamental relationships of the most basic of things rather than some unknowable spaghetti monster known as dark matter.

arg, hard for me that watch this. I think it is more accurate to say that there is 95% of the theory of gravity that doesn't work right now, rather than to say gravity is perfect and this undetectable (it isn't exothermic or endothermic, nor does it reflect light or any electromagnetic radiation, and works like gravity in reverse(it has a repelling force not a binding force yet it binds itself and only repels normal matter) matter and energy (which o, is nearly all the known matter and energy in the universe). Or perhaps dark matter and energy are just ghosts, whooooooooo WHOOOOOOOOOO!!

In all seriousness, it "could" exist. But this is really one of those cases similar to retrograde motion of the planets. If one holds without question that earth is the center of rotation of the universe you have to create retrograde motion out of necessity. Same goes for here, if you assume that the little we know about space, energy, matter and time are so accurate that they are beyond question then you do "need" this invisible, unknowable thing called dark matter...either that or one of our more fundamental understandings are flawed. What say you guys, I am alone on this?

Thanks! =D
>> ^Haldaug:

quality

I wasn't taught that the universe is made out of atoms, but rather that the universe is a whole lot of nothing. As the dark matter and dark energy theories are (apparently) still just highly theoretical, those text books are currently correct, yes?

Also, I'd like to know how that nice 12-15 stitch gash, the broken nose, the swollen lip, bruised cheek, and miscellaneous bruises came supposedly from a fall that broke the nose. Apparently, we need to get some physicists over there stat, because there might be some clumps of dense dark matter stuck in the linoleum.

>> ^Almanildo:
>> ^spawnflagger:
I wonder what his take on antimatter/dark-matter is? Is it something which is being created in the LHC?
Dark matter isn't being created in any human experiment yet.
When matter/antimatter is created, what happens is merely that energy goes from one form (kinetic energy in particles) to another (rest mass of matter). The same would go for dark matter if it was ever going to be created in an experiment.


Sorry Almanildo, you are right. The LHC is not yet creating dark matter, but that is one of the aims:
"We need to study dark matter directly by detecting relic dark matter particles in an underground detector and by creating dark matter particles at accelerators, where we can measure their properties and understand how they fit into the cosmic picture."
from:
http://www.uslhc.us/LHC_Science/Questions_for_the_Universe/Dark_Matter

So, how would the law of conservation of energy apply to dark matter and dark energy?
Current theory states that dark energy is homogeneous and makes up 70% of the universe (with visible matter being 4% and dark matter 26%). I realize at the LHC they have only regular energy to use...

LHC is supposed to start back up on Feb 15th, and the proton beams are expected to reach 99.9% speed of light on December 21st 2012. (lol, just kidding. it's actually slated for sometime in 2011).

>> ^spawnflagger:
I wonder what his take on antimatter/dark-matter is? Is it something which is being created in the LHC?

Dark matter isn't being created in any human experiment yet.

When matter/antimatter is created, what happens is merely that energy goes from one form (kinetic energy in particles) to another (rest mass of matter). The same would go for dark matter if it was ever going to be created in an experiment.