I haven’t been following this discussion and TJO’s thread closely, but FYI (and his/her?) interest I’m also a scientist with a google-H-index of 40. The thing is, H-indices, as a measure, have their own assumptions and biases and are not very comparable across different fields of science, so to flaunt an “h-index” as something globally meaningful per se is not especially useful. Yes…it means you’ve published some stuff which is great.
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I consider pacifism to be evil if one fails to protect his family during a violent incident against them. We must stand up for one being so wronged and defend them from someone breaking the law and harming them.
I mentioned pacifism as something where I stand against myself in wanting to claim that it is Jesus teaching when it is an extrapolation of it. I’m not going to then accept anyone else’s extrapolation either.
I read the accounts of Christ and know that many gave their lives because they saw Christ alive after his crucifixion and death. Many people die for something they believe to be true even though it is not. But it improbable that someone would give their life for something they know to be false. Seeing a risen Christ was not simply a matter of belief to the many who saw him.
So accepting that Jesus is who he said he was and showed it by his resurrection, I look to his teachings.
Nothing is out of bounds including the notion of the trinity. Jesus clearly taught about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But to define God above what he revealed is foolish. The “required” trinity notion goes beyond what Jesus taught, is divisive, and is a usurpation of the Lordship of Christ. It is also used to wrongly judge others.
To say A=B and B=C but A!=C is also silly. I mean maybe that’s how God is but that’s not anything he revealed.
That Jesus is God and that Jesus is man are both said in the accounts of his life, death, and resurrection. I don’t play the 100% numbers game (100% man and 100% God) which makes Jesus a 200% person. Also there are ways he was a man which are unlike God and ways he was God which are unlike man. It is also clear that the Jesus is submissive to the Father and will be so eternally and that Jesus said his Father is greater than he is. My answer is I don’t know and we’re not deciding who God is for him. I worship the God who is even if I don’t understand how his revelation all works together.
Accepting Jesus teachings means I accept the Old Testament as God’s word and as it testifies about him but the law and the prophets has been filled up in doing to others as you would have them do to you. Also Jesus said that part of the OT law was there because of the hardness of the people’s heart. So his law given was adjusted based on what they were able to accept.
Jesus also said he would send scribes and prophets so I also give credence to the writings of his eye witness followers and those accepted by them.
I don’t see any notion of a “canon” as if God is finished speaking. I do see Jesus clearly stating he is the one teacher and we’re just brothers and sisters. But the notion of Sola Scriptura as if God only speaks through the Bible is self contradictory teaching of man because no verse says it is only scripture. The scriptures are filled with God speaking though his son, other physical appearances, visions, dreams, a burning bush, signs, writing in stone, etc. To try to say God can now only speak through the written word is just plain silly.
I don’t see any support for the protestant pastor or catholic bishop in the scriptures. We are to gather as gifted believers where we encourage each other to love and good works. We should gather around one man but that man is Christ not some other religious leader.
I am explaining how I start and then build up from there to follow the Lord Jesus Christ. I’ve mentioned a few “consensus teachings” I reject because it is not Jesus teachings but man’s. But I’m sure there are many as a consensus is not even a part of my consideration of Jesus teachings. Although I do give weight to the history on the writings and their acceptance. But that is a historical consideration.
I do enjoy listening to Michael Heiser, a scholar and historian of OT and Second Temple period. He relays information on various topics form other scholars who have studied it. And from reading the literature of the people at the time it is quite enlightening to see how the people it was written to understood things. But I also like to check on the original sources he mentions also.
His naked bible podcast website is quite informative including the understanding during Jesus times by some Jews about the Two Powers of Yahweh. He talks of it here Naked Bible 433: The Epistle of Jude Part 2 | The Naked Bible Podcast
We can never understand, even in the transcendent. Nobody understands QM as it is. Where was MWI presented as needed because it is infinite? And I agree, I see no reason whatsoever and howsoever that universes repeat in infinity. The infinity of universes yet to come in to existence included.
As for the eraser
a theorem proved by Phillippe Eberhard shows that if the accepted equations of relativistic quantum field theory are correct, it should never be possible to experimentally violate causality using quantum effects
that’ll do me.
- At this moment in my life, I am not a fan of an “all or nothing” view of consensus according to which–it seems to me–"Hold no belief that is not ‘consensually believed’ " is the rule. The alternative is, I think, "Hold no belief that is ‘consensually believed’ ".
- In the former view, “consensus says” is a game of “Simon says”: e,g, “Simon says: ‘stand on your left foot, flap your bent arms, and cluck like a chicken’. Ooops, you lost your balance and your right foot touched the floor; you’re out.”
- It is a fact, I am sure, that the real number line is, theoretically, an infinity of abstract things called “numbers”, i.e. nobody I know can hold, touch, or see a number, until it’s written.
- The marvelous thing about any specific number in the line is that it is essentially a point (or location) and has no dimension in and of itself.
- The next marvelous thing, IMO, is that a “unit measure” consists, numerically, of an infinite number of numbers.
- Additionally, a “unit measure” is an infinitesimally small subset of the real number line.
- It’s inconceivable to me to think of a “unit measure” that is not a product of consensus and its meaning and value is very much dependent on consensus.
- I happen to believe–in good conscience–that a cosmos exists in which I live, move, and have my being. I believe that that (or this) cosmos is boundless in volume and age at this time and will continue forever.
- A cosmos boundless in volume is boundless because Absolute Space is boundless. An eternal cosmos is unbounded in duration because Absolute Time is boundless.
- A boundless cosmos in Absolute Space and Absolute Time is, IMO, physical, real, and neither provable nor falsifiable, regardless what any consensus opinion says.
- “All or No Consensus” thought is powerless to tame, control, or explain the Cosmos in which I believe I live, move, and have my being. “All or No Consensus” thought is also powerless in changing my belief about the Cosmos in which I believe I live, move, and have my being.
I was a math major/computer minor in college so I did have some math.
Yes, it is incorrect that an infinite set must include everything. And I explained why and gave an example of an infinite set of non-overlapping infinities. Are you reading the posts or just glancing for errors? 
The power of what any person believes is their own choice on to believe.
We can believe something based on evidence and logic or any other reason or no reason at all.
I choose to base my beliefs on evidence and logic as the best means to belief in what is true.
To not accept consensus as a determiner of reality instead of evidence and logic does NOT mean something is wrong because it is or is not a consensus. It just does not answer the question what is physically true at all.
One can never hold a number as it is an abstract concept (and a real one). Ink on a paper is never the number 3.
It could be an absolute space and time but that is not what is shown by the evidence of the properties of the physical. Entropy is seen. The universe is a closed system in fact if it is infinite it is an ultimate closed system. The evidence shows it would wear down. So the idea of an infinite past is untenable if this evidence is correct. No?
What evidence do you think there is?
That matter has entropy,
Roughly, how much entropy, i.e. energy which is unavailable to do work, do you think a boundless Cosmos with an infinite past might have?
I think with an infinite past we’d never get here as all the matter in an infinite space would be subject to entropy. I don’t see it being different in an infinite space as it wouldn’t be pockets of non-entropy.
Some scientist really do some outstanding work and then seem to go off the rails. Fred Singer comes to mind.
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What, this one?
Reception of 2021 book Unsettled
Critics of Koonin’s book Unsettled accused him of cherry picking data, muddying the waters surrounding the science of climate change, and having no experience in climate science.[24]
In a review in Scientific American , economist Gary Yohe wrote that Koonin “falsely suggest[s] that we don’t understand the risks well enough to take action”:
The science is stronger than ever around findings that speak to the likelihood and consequences of climate impacts, and has been growing stronger for decades. In the early days of research, the uncertainty was wide; but with each subsequent step that uncertainty has narrowed or become better understood. This is how science works, and in the case of climate, the early indications detected and attributed in the 1980s and 1990s, have come true, over and over again and sooner than anticipated… [Decision makers] are using the best and most honest science to inform prospective investments in abatement (reducing greenhouse gas emissions to diminish the estimated likelihoods of dangerous climate change impacts) and adaptation (reducing vulnerabilities to diminish their current and projected consequences).[21]
Physicist Mark Boslough, a former student of Koonin, posted a critical review at Yale Climate Connections. He stated that “Koonin makes use of an old strawman concocted by opponents of climate science in the 1990s to create an illusion of arrogant scientists, biased media, and lying politicians – making them easier to attack.”[25]
Nonprofit organization Inside Climate News reported that climate scientists call Koonin’s conclusions “fatally out of date … and based on the 2013 physical science report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”[10]
Mark P. Mills, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science,[26] lauded the book in The Wall Street Journal as “rebut[ing] much of the dominant political narrative”.[27] Twelve scientists analyzed Mills’s arguments and said that he merely repeated Koonin’s incorrect and misleading claims.[28]
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Not accepting consensus is not the same as going off the rails. It is coloring outside the lines.
We need the freedom to think differently or we really have no freedom at all.
I’ll have to read more form Fred Singer.
In this case he has his own coloring book
Doesn’t the claim “out of date” data from the scientific community merely cover the historical fact that they got it wrong? Isn’t a way to continue to cry wolf and pretend each time that it must be real this time?
I’m old enough to remember the Global Ice Age that was coming and how we would run out of oil by the year 2000 according to my teacher.
It is interesting in the scifi 2001 novel from 1968 talked about the Earth’s 2000 population being 5 billion people that had to take turns on which day they could eat because we couldn’t grow enough food for so many people.
“All the matter in an infinite space”??? Comparatively speaking, it seems to me that you’re suggesting that “all the matter in an infinite space” comes in collections moving through space. But what if it doesn’t come only in “collections” moving through infinite space?
As in matter/energy continuously being created?
What do you think matter is that it can never undergo change of form?
The “conservation of mass” doesn’t mean that matter can never be broken down, redistributed, and undergo change does it?
It’s about ever refined evidence. Absurd exponentials against Malthusian linear equations aren’t science. Common folk aren’t stupid. They know that the temperature is rising. We’re having the greatest drought for 46 years. Every year’s the warmest year ever. Yeah we can adapt, we the rich. What we really need to do is be Christlike. Be fair. To the poor. To the bottom two billion. We need to be Christians. Not evil. Not justifying evil. Not pretending we’re not being evil. That the poor only have themselves to blame as J.D. Vance would have it.
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It is also about an alarmism that has constantly been shown to be incorrect. We should learn to stop the alarmism.
We are killing the poor in places like Africa because we want to use costlier and less effective renewable energy. They could have fossil fuel powered electricity to keep medicines cold but instead they have none.