Do you believe in a soul?

[P3nT4gR4m]

You'll get flamed all right. The only thing that reacts more zealously than a religious fanatic when their belief system is under attack is a scientist.


:backs slowly out of thread:

[Kai]

Also, fuck this. I'm not going to waste any more time trying to explain basic biology to a person whom it is wasted upon. I have better things to do with my time.

Spoken like a true fanatic.

Fuck off. Just because you can't apply anything credible to your babbling pseudo-scientific musings doesn't give you the right to call Kai a fanatic.

Thanks. The truth is I don't like to spend time explaining things when the explanations won't be put to good use. FP also failed to answer my basic questions and yes, spouted pseudo-science (pseudo meaning "false"). That, and I needed to sleep

[Kai]

I really don't even know how to put this....SPERMIES SWIM IN SUGAR FLUID.

LIES! Sperm tastes salty

It also has basic ions in it, like every other body fluid. Tears taste salty, whats your point?

[P3nT4gR4m]

Are you saying tears are made of sugar too?

[Kai]

You'll get flamed all right. The only thing that reacts more zealously than a religious fanatic when their belief system is under attack is a scientist.


:backs slowly out of thread:

Or we just ignore the dumbfucks who forget that science is responsible for modern living. I firmly believe that if you don't like science, get the hell off your computer, turn your electricity and plumbing off, move out of your house into a yurt and start using "medical" techniques like bloodletting again. Yay, doesn't that sound like so much FUN?

The reason most biologists don't take the time to argue with creationists has nothing to do with not knowing answers. It has everything to do with not wanting to deal with people who can't understand basic biology (if they wanted to teach, they would have gone into education), having no patience for people who can't handle basic tennents of biology (like evolution), and frankly have better things to do, like real research that brings about new cancer treatments, or describing organisms new to science, or, I don't know, creating something practical from past research that increases our ability to cope with this modern world.

If fundies and pseudo-scientists can't grok this, then fuck em. We have better things to do than pander to people still stuck in the middle ages, not from oppression or poverty, but out of ignorance.

[Kai]

Are you saying tears are made of sugar too?

Tears can have sugars in them, just like sweat can have sugars in them. Body excretory fluids are composed of dissolved ions, which includes glucose, salts and other simple molecules which can become dissolved in water.

Seminal fluid is specifically for the movement and nutriment of sperm, so it contains lots of glucose, because those flagella don't move themselves.

[P3nT4gR4m]

You'll get flamed all right. The only thing that reacts more zealously than a religious fanatic when their belief system is under attack is a scientist.


:backs slowly out of thread:

Or we just ignore the dumbfucks who forget that science is responsible for modern living. I firmly believe that if you don't like science, get the hell off your computer, turn your electricity and plumbing off, move out of your house into a yurt and start using "medical" techniques like bloodletting again. Yay, doesn't that sound like so much FUN?

The reason most biologists don't take the time to argue with creationists has nothing to do with not knowing answers. It has everything to do with not wanting to deal with people who can't understand basic biology (if they wanted to teach, they would have gone into education), having no patience for people who can't handle basic tennents of biology (like evolution), and frankly have better things to do, like real research that brings about new cancer treatments, or describing organisms new to science, or, I don't know, creating something practical from past research that increases our ability to cope with this modern world.

If fundies and pseudo-scientists can't grok this, then fuck em. We have better things to do than pander to people still stuck in the middle ages, not from oppression or poverty, but out of ignorance.

Here's my theory and I can't prove it scientifically so ignore it as you will.

There is science and there is art and never the twain shall meet.

Artists get pissed off with scientists cos science kills the inspiration stone dead. Try writing a poem about feeling you can fly with a scientist yapping in your ear about how classic Newtonian physics expressly prohibits this characteristic and you'll get the picture. Art is magical and mystical and science is all about debunking that kind of thing.

Scientists get pissed off with artists because art is, by it's very nature, subjective and the mere mention of subjectivity is anathema to the scientist. Subjective leads to bad science and only objectivity has ever been any use to the human race. You can't prove beauty (although there was a theory it had to do with symmetry) You can't measure or quantify a sonnet.

I'm pretty sure this is the reason lab coats are white, instead of paisley pattern.

Philosophy is art. Never try to argue philosophy on scientific terms. By the same token - never try to prove science to a philosopher. Both will merely lead to great lulz and lulz are most definitely art.

[Kai]

Or you could just be a person like myself who knows when each is appropriate, and dabbles in both.

The argument that science and art can't mix is bullshit. They can. Most people just don't have the scientific rigour and artistic creativity at the same time to do it right. Leonardo Da Vinci is the obvious response.

[P3nT4gR4m]

The argument that science and art can't mix is bullshit.

Agreed, look at what they did with the Mandelbrot sets but, as a generalisation, it holds true.

[Kai]

The argument that science and art can't mix is bullshit.

Agreed, look at what they did with the Mandelbrot sets but, as a generalisation, it holds true.

I wouldn't have replied to this thread if it wasn't for one statement, something about energy turning into nothing.

Once you go down that path you've reached science, and I am well within my liability to pounce.

[P3nT4gR4m]

That's kinda my point. The thread is "do you believe in a soul. The minute science was brought into the mix it became a hiding to nowhere. We are left with the classic science v's philosophy stand-off.

Hilarious tho it is, it seems to get a lot of people pissed off.

[Cramulus]

The argument that science and art can't mix is bullshit.

Agreed, look at what they did with the Mandelbrot sets but, as a generalisation, it holds true.

I wouldn't have replied to this thread if it wasn't for one statement, something about energy turning into nothing.

Once you go down that path you've reached science, and I am well within my liability to pounce.

I visualize this as a siren next to your computer
which goes off when someone makes a statement that is not scientifically sound
and you cannot turn it off until you've said something condescendly pedagogical

[Kai]

The argument that science and art can't mix is bullshit.

Agreed, look at what they did with the Mandelbrot sets but, as a generalisation, it holds true.

I wouldn't have replied to this thread if it wasn't for one statement, something about energy turning into nothing.

Once you go down that path you've reached science, and I am well within my liability to pounce.

I visualize this as a siren next to your computer
which goes off when someone makes a statement that is not scientifically sound
and you cannot turn it off until you've said something condescendly pedagogical

More like a siren goes off in my head.

[Elder Iptuous]

You'll get flamed all right. The only thing that reacts more zealously than a religious fanatic when their belief system is under attack is a scientist.
:backs slowly out of thread:

Suicide scientists FTW!@!

[Cainad (dec.)]

Jesus Fucking Christ! 

Why the big circle-jerk about some idea of FP's not being SCIENCE?

This thread is called "Do you BELIEVE in a SOUL?", not "PROVE whether there's a soul with SCIENCE"

I can't even begin to cite references ITT, because it's way to long and circular and filled with BS, but it never occurred to me that the good Profit was making some scientific hypothesis with need for experimental evidence, he was just giving an idea, a perspective, and he even said it could be a lie.  IMO KAI you have been totally unfair here, no need to have a cactus up your ass just because you've got a degree in biology and he suggested something that YOU think is unfounded crap. I think FP has held his own pretty well ITT, where you have been a little bit fanatical.

Keep the psychotic science pedantry out of a thread about belief.

Oh and "just thinking about it" is pretty much how Einstein came up with relativity. Philosophy or science?

Where has your "true-in-a" sense gone? 

bones,
-braced for the flames (all I wanted to know was how much it weighs  )

So first off, yes, I do believe in a soul.  Now for the brain hurty part of the post.


Most religions and beliefs share that a human/talking monkey holds some sort of cosmic energy that exist through out the universe and have called it a soul.  Here is we know from various speculations out there.  Mass and Energy are one and the same only in different states.  The body requires energy to function.  When a body dies that energy is gone.  As that energy has mass, it can be concluded that when a body dies its mass decreases due to the energy becoming non-existent.  Where that energy goes? Who knows, but we know it must go somewhere as if it didn't the body would just keep moving about on its own.  Maybe that is how zombies come into existence, dead bodies that fail to discharge properly.

Or I could be lying.

FP framed his beliefs in pseudoscientific language, which makes them seem cheesy to a great many people (myself included) and easy to pick on.

The notion that a body's mass decreases is based on relatively poor scientific methodology, so there is no reason to see it as more than quack science. On top of that leap of faith, there is the rather awkward phrase "the energy becoming non-existent," followed by "Where that energy goes?" This is a contradiction, and the former statement violates untold hours of research that says quite definitively that energy does not just 'cease to exist.'

Trying to dismiss this as scientific arrogance is nothing short of insulting. Yes, scientists can be very fucking arrogant, and yes, science does overturn its own theories, but that is a pretty lame excuse for trying to pass off a theory that involves some sort of unidentified "energy" that is responsible for zombies as plausible.
So which is more arrogant: making ultimately tentative claims about the physical nature of reality based on empirical experiments and observation (often times, countless amounts of both), thus creating working theories that can be used to explain real phenomena? Or dismissing all that as "just a theory" and claiming that armchair intellectualism is equally likely to be true, because "everything is a possibility," resulting in theories that explain nothing and terminate further inquiry rather than inviting it?

This line of thinking supports the belief that all evidence for evolution was fabricated by incredibly advanced aliens that operate in a physical dimension outside our own, and therefore we cannot see any evidence for them. Keep wanking away at the little postmodernist in your head and you can reason that it's impossible to objectively prove that this is not true.
But it's a worthless hypothesis because it doesn't explain shit.

It's the exact same kind of thinking that leads to all that "quantum" bullshit out there.