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R.Wreck
SFN Regular

USA
1191 Posts

Posted - 03/05/2005 :  14:52:35  Show Profile Send R.Wreck a Private Message
Here's somebody else giving "skeptic" a bad name. The Real Skeptic has some interesting ideas:

quote:
However, take any website or magazine devoted to skeptics and skepticism and find that these skeptics are skeptical about only one thing: Anything, anything at all, that challenges the status quo, that in any way opposes the new religion of Empirical Science, a religion founded on the teachings of one man, Sir. Isaac Newton, who believed that he could prove that which can not be proven, that gravity, the most dynamic force in the universe, is an inert property, like color or hardness, of matter, that objects travel in straight lines unless forces act to alter that travel, that white light is made up of all colors and that light is arranged in the order that it comes out of the prism.


quote:
The simple fact is, light diminishes with distance, and it does so at an alarming rate, inversely with the square of that distance. If we can see light from a star, or the combined light from a galaxy, then the source of that light is pretty darn close to us. When Voyager sent back pictures of our sun from the orbit of Neptune, the sun was barely discernible from the background stars.

Distance does matter when it comes to light, and, just as the lights of a plane blink out of existence with distance, so does the light of stars. If we can see a star, we can probably get there within a reasonable period of time. Just because empirical science makes up a bunch of stuff that claims something is impossible doesn't mean that made-up stuff limits the life that forms on other planets from reaching out fearlessly into space and visiting us.



quote:
Once we know how galaxies are formed, we can time the formation of planets, and the life that evolves on those planets, and we can conclude that it occurs simultaneously throughout the galaxy. This isn't the place to go into why we are lagging behind, why we have chosen religious conclusions like mass/gravity to limit our technology, but timing tells us that thousands and thousands of civilizations have developed throughout the galaxy to the point where interstellar travel is the norm rather than the exception. We, with our primitive notions and beliefs are the exception, and it is not unusual that we are probably one of the primary stops on a sociological tour of the galaxy. We are probably visited by dozens of different civilizations at any particular time and while all of those civilizations might have differences in customs and mores, they all have one thing in common: Either by accident or as a result of the consistent development of viable theories, they have accounted for the current causes of force and motion and have developed the technology needed to exploit the mechanical nature of the forces that produce the motions of our existence.

In short, they have learned how to manipulate gravity, the mechanism embedded in expanding electromagnetic fields, so that they can either neutralize it, or use it as a means of acceleration, whichever is appropriate to their task at hand.



He goes on and on about how we don't understand gravity, Newton was wrong, "Empirical Science" is all screwed up, etc. He does score pretty well on the crackpot index though.

The foundation of morality is to . . . give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibliities of knowledge.
T. H. Huxley

The Cattle Prod of Enlightened Compassion

Siberia
SFN Addict

Brazil
2322 Posts

Posted - 03/05/2005 :  15:26:13   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Visit Siberia's Homepage  Send Siberia an AOL message  Send Siberia a Yahoo! Message Send Siberia a Private Message
[curls into a tight ball] That is... scary.

"Why are you afraid of something you're not even sure exists?"
- The Kovenant, Via Negativa

"People who don't like their beliefs being laughed at shouldn't have such funny beliefs."
-- unknown
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sweetmiracle
Skeptic Friend

USA
74 Posts

Posted - 03/05/2005 :  15:43:38   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send sweetmiracle a Private Message
This person has a truly creative mind, but he seems pretty immune to evidence.....

Remarkable claims require remarkable proof.

-Carl Sagan
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Plyss
Skeptic Friend

Netherlands
231 Posts

Posted - 03/06/2005 :  03:22:17   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Plyss a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by R.Wreck

[quote]The simple fact is, light diminishes with distance, and it does so at an alarming rate, inversely with the square of that distance. If we can see light from a star, or the combined light from a galaxy, then the source of that light is pretty darn close to us. When Voyager sent back pictures of our sun from the orbit of Neptune, the sun was barely discernible from the background stars.




An artist impression of the sun seen from Pluto (which is further from the sun most of the time). The site it's from seems knowledgeable.



I can't seem to find those voyager pics this "Real Skeptic" is referring to. I'll browse the NASA website when i'm back on my home system.
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filthy
SFN Die Hard

USA
14408 Posts

Posted - 03/06/2005 :  04:14:32   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send filthy a Private Message
I note that the Real Skeptic has books to sell, and a pretty good number of titles. I rather liked this one:
quote:
300 Years ago, the elite few dictated our science. Today the elite few, dead these 300 years, still dictate our science.

We have abdicated our responsibility to ensure that we have as accurate picture of reality as possible in order that our technology reflect reality and provide its benefit to all of humanity. We have a contract with science. We will give scientists our hard earned resources so that they are relieved of the burden of earning a living so they can spend their time coming up with answers to the questions of reality for which we don't have the time to examine. In return, we get crackpot ideas for which there is not a shred of evidence and ample evidence against:

The never proven notion of Newton that gravity is a property of matter
The unsupported conclusion that white light is made up of all light colors
The unexamined assumption that the colors of light are lined up the way they come out of a prism rather than by brightness
The resulting assumption that reverses the spectrum, placing blue as the shortest frequency and red as the longest against all measurable observation
The absurd notion that light is not made up of what gives it off
The deadly belief that finding a fact predicted by an idea can turn that idea into a fact
The ignorance that sees planets move without a current force
The three hundred year belief in Newton's precessional wobble which fails to describe measurable precession
The delusion that nature created oversized dinosaurs too big to move
The scientific myth of the ice age(s)
The scientific myth of global warming
The scientific myth of species evolution as opposed to characteristic evolution
The expanding universe that results from a red shift using a reversed spectrum
The really brainless belief that a star's distance can be determined with an accuracy greater than the unknowable variables underlying the measurement
The incredible belief that an atomic clock demonstrates that time, a result of rate, is actually a variable of rate
The blindness of using an ancient explosion to describe current motion in the universe
The laughable assumption that because an optical telescope points toward the sky, the background radiation a radio telescope picks up comes from the sky

Keep on tokin' that hop pipe, Pete. You're gettin' some real wowsers of ideas from it.


"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres


"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude

Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,

and Crypto-Communist!

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Plyss
Skeptic Friend

Netherlands
231 Posts

Posted - 03/06/2005 :  13:50:54   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Plyss a Private Message
Oh man, this is totally awesome!

http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/

Set for the Sun as seen from Neptune with a 2 degrees field view.
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