What Is the Best Misconception mankind has made?

[Warborn]

The fact that you can walk around it forever and ever means it's round. Otherwise there'd be an edge, and you'd fall off after going too far.

[Revolution]

Hense the world is not flat. Hey, shall we take this thread and email its link to the flat world people?!
Wonder what kind of argument they would put up.

[chaos1428]

And the fact that if the world was flat, there wouldn't br any oceans. They would all run off the edge of the planet.

[Sputty]

They said there as a 150 foot wall around the earth.

[Revolution]

150 foot wall? Thats it? (Its a wall of Ice right?)

Lets just admit that we are all controlled by aliens and their experiment......

[Denali]

Ok, my response to the "I only believe what I can see with my own two eyes" there is no God argument. Before I start kudos to Mistled, I agree with everything you've said thus far.

Francis Crick once used this example while attempting to explain consciousness. Imagine Mary, a colorblind neuroscientist, who is extremely interested in color vision. She studies it at length, and eventually is able to pinpoint the exact areas of the brain responsible for color vision, even which areas respond to which color. Now, even though Mary has become more knowledgable about color vision than any person on the planet, she still will never truly understand color. She will never experience color.

Why does Mary believe in color? She has never seen it, she has data which supports the fact that color exists, but really she just has data that happens to fit the facts. Nevertheless, she has faith that color does indeed exist.

Let's say you're a huge astronomy/astrophysics buff. Carl Sagan is your idol. You've read every publication that has to do with neutron stars, know every fact published about them and sleep with the "Idiots Guide to Neutron Stars" under your pillow every night. Of course you believe in the stars or you wouldn't study them. Have you ever seen a neutron star with your naked eye? Has anyone else? True you have data about the neutron star, mainly from doppler effect readings, but really the data can't be proven or dis-proven in this instance, it just seems to fit the facts. There may be new laws of physics that govern the existance of neutron stars. But still, you believe everything you have read to be true. You have faith in science, faith that neutron stars do indeed exist.

Now, pray tell, what is the difference between not believing in something until you have proof and believing in something until you have proof it doesn't exist? Two sides of the same coin. We all believe in things that we can't prove exist, every single day. We all do it. We may not all believe in a "God," but we all operate with faith in some context every day.

There will always be some things that are unexplainable by science. Some of the most decorated neuroscientists in the world that are studying consciousness have given in to the fact that there are just some things about the cause of consciousness that can't be explained. Some attempt to explain these, but there are always counter-arguments.

So to sum up (sorry for the book), we all have faith, we all operate under faith every single day. It's just a matter of what we have faith in. Neutron Stars, colorvision, God. They all fit the facts, most people have faith in one or another. Can you prove any of them wrong?

den

[Tobias]

There is a God, I have tea and crackers with him every friday and we discuss what should happen in the Universe.



















Just fyi, dont be by any major citys with airports 15 years from next tuesday.

[mistled]

Originally posted by Sputty
The earth CAN be moved as it is a large mass. Although, we don't have the technology to do it really, even though with damming of water that has thrown off the axis a little so technically we have.

Reread what I said Sputty and quit trying to argue for arguement's sake. I said that the verses were a "comparison between a single person's ability to move the entire earth by force", not what all of mankind could perhaps accomplish someday in the future maybe. Go back over two thousand years to when those verses were written and you'll realize that at the time, the idea of being able to move the earth by force was inconceiveable.

[Tobias]

Originally posted by {BOHICA}mistled
Reread what I said Sputty and quit trying to argue for arguement's sake. I said that the verses were a "comparison between a single person's ability to move the entire earth by force", not what all of mankind could perhaps accomplish someday in the future maybe. Go back over two thousand years to when those verses were written and you'll realize that at the time, the idea of being able to move the earth by force was inconceiveable.

while a single person could not move the earth, and God is not big enough to, he could get the Vixtath'mogatinic`vibrrric'saladwi`thn'o`ran'`cher o's to do it, they are quite large.

[Ludio]

The_Denali, faith in god and faith in science is different. If you have faith in neuron stars its because there was some form of data that you couldnt explain, someone came along (you seem to be the expert on this so you would know more than me) and explained the data. Other people looked at that data and eventually said that the model of the neuron star is the best thing we have to explain it. Now lets look at something like the brain, at the moment scientists have said that they cant understand all of it, does that mean that it will be that way forever? No, just as 100 years ago no one knew how to go into space, at the moment no one knows everything about the brain.

Now faith in god is a bit more complicated. We look at the universe and say we dont know how it came into being, someone thinks maybe it was something more powerfull then anything we could imagine. Everyone else cant think of anything better and so they go ahead and believe it. In reality we know nothing. There is no data to support a god, it is an untested hypothesis, it doesnt mean it isnt true, just untested. The universe is like the brain, at the moment we dont have the slightest clue where it came from, but that doesnt mean we cant find out, just that it is beyond us at the moment.

I can understand the need to think that there is something that created the universe, it is very difficult to understand and at times I have wanted to explain it myself, but instead of just attributing to a higher power why not accept that it is beyond current understanding, and may well be for a long time.

[Sputty]

Mitled, I wasn't arguing anything, but I was jsut make a note to add. If you think I was arguing, you're WRONG! JK, but I was jsut pointing out a useless fact. That's what I do...

[Denali]

Ludio, I agree totally. But, why is the concept of faith in a "God" and the faith in other things different? They all come from the same place in a person (IMHO), who's to say that one day someone will travel across the stars and come across a neutron star and do experiments and observe all the theories relating to them to be true. Yay. This same person turns around to come home, and comes across a being on the way home. Turns out to be God. So, all of those theories have just been proven true also. (Now I"m not saying that someone could just wander around in a space ship and run into God. It'd be far easier to just drop a bunch of acid ) The point of my rant is this: faith in all things comes from the same place, things really aren't all that different...and anything's possible...except Nav ever being Pimptastic.....that's just absurd....

den