Summer means no religion or politics?

[Nacho]

Natcho, can't you ask questions that were not answered before?

- Why are you so sure they were wrong? Because I told you so?

- Gorillas have souls, you don't!

- The best and kindest golden-hearted person in earth will surely die in peace. That's Heaven.

- I have no doubt someone like Hitler could confess his sins. If he truly acknowledged what he did, I wouldn't want to be inside his head. Haven't you done bad things that you regretted later, Natcho?

- I will not answer the question about your sister. If you don't need God then figure it out yourself.

- Everybody can "Go to Heaven", even you.

- I hope those who believe in Shiva play Dave Gilbert's game

- Read the Old Testament again.

- The same as above.

- What do you think?

Your answers Natcho.  

All evasives. Okay, gotcha, when a "believer" is asked about their beliefs, they evade the debate.

[Tuomas]

Or maybe they just finally grew bored of this fucking bullshit?

[Akatosh]

It's sort of like watching two chicks mudwrestle, but instead of chicks, it's random strangers from the INTERNET (echo), and instead of mud, they sling arguments and the occasional logical fallacy/ad hominem.

... coming to think of it, actually, it's not like mudwrestling at all.

[Ghost]

It's also a fact that we already had all of this in *that one thread*, you know. I felt like making bananaphone jokes, but. Ah well.

[Lionmonkey]

Lionmonkey:
Scientific theories are well established conceptual frameworks, to a degree that it is very unlikely they get overthrown as a whole. Small parts of it are gonna change though, and it continuously happens.

Actually, you could say the same about teachings of the Bible.

But nothing about them is illogical. You could say that one has to believe the theory, but what is the point of saying that? Is it somehow beneficial if I decide to stop believing e.g. the theory of gravity?

Through the use of logics you can prove that completely anything is illogical. All of the sciences (mathematics, physics, cryptozoology, etc.) need you to believe in one or more axioms. And there's always a sligh chance that any of these axioms are wrong. I mean, sure the science has more than often shown it's reliability. But it is still possible that it is completely wrong. It is still possible that the world cannot be understood through rational thinking. So you cannot completely rely on it. Just like you cannot completely rely on any aproach. Because it always can be wrong.

Now, I'm not saying that I always do everything in contrast with what science (rational thinking) says, in fact I do use this rational thinking through my life. But only because it seems like the best candidate for me right now. But I do not forget that it may not be.

And luckily, scientific truths aren't decided by a majority vote, contrary to religious "truths".

In fact they are.

There are scientists with good reputation (Who either completely agree with all current standart "truths", or have convined the majority that their "truth" is correct). If their new "truth" isn't completely outrageous, it will be accepted as either addition to or substitution for the current ones.

And there are ones with bad reputation (Who have failed to convince majority and failed to be convinced by it in their wrongness).

What is said to be scientific facts in big heavy books for smart people is what majority thinks is true.

It is impossible to know what is truth and what is not. It is only possible to decide how much proof you need to agree that something is indeed true.


On a side note, i've spotted one curious similarity between religious zealots and some other people of a subgroup I cannot name. The first ones, when engaged in a discussion about their religion tend to say "Hey, you are so stupid, It's all God's(') plan , can't you understand that?"
The second ones, when asked about qustionableness of reality say "Hey, it's against common sense, don't be stupid."
An interesting occurence indeed.

It's nice that you feel great when indulging in your ignorance though.

I wouldn't call it ignorance. Ignorance is a)Lack of information b)Dismission of information

About the first one: I never stated that I know everything in the world and I am willing to learn new insights if anyone has got them.

Now the second one: I have never completely and categorically denied any of the theories. I actually select to abide the rules of the one which seems the most beneficial and possible to me for the time being. I just do not believe in it completely, just in case.

I guess that's my nature. When faced with a choise, I choose all the options. So nothing is lost.





This was posted for the good of all the folk.

[Nacho]

Or maybe they just finally grew bored of this fucking bullshit?

There are, evidently, some other better threads to follow... Like, for instance, your weekly "Help me with my laptop" one.

[Misj']

I felt like making bananaphone jokes

I liked the bananaphone jones...they were fun...ah, good times...good times. Some day we will tell our grand-childeren about the great wars following the bananaphone.

[Vince Twelve]

The problem is: science is not 'looking for the truth'; this is a common misconception of science, but it's just not the job of science. Science is about 'looking for the mechanisms (based on objective observations)'. There is no why, there's only a how in true science. So your story is (more or less) correct when it concerns the mechanisms by which things work (also not entirely because there's a lot of politics in science).

I'm not sure what you're talking about.  Perhaps it's a difference in semantics, but I have to respectfully disagree with this.  If you mean the "Truth" or "Why" in the religious sense, then yeah, whatevs.  We're in totally different ballparks here.  But if you mean "truth" as in facts and "why" as in why certain things do what they do or react to other things in the way that they do, then science is all about those things.  We know "how" an apple falls to the Earth (accelerating towards the center of Earth's gravity at 9.8 meters per second per second) and we know "why" the apple falls to the Earth (a natural phenomenon of mass attracting other mass that we named gravity).

Also...if most scientists have as few assumptions as possible then why do most of them start writing the article (including the conclusion) even before a single experiment was conducted. This too is common practice, and is often advocated to save time and money. Only if the outcome of the experiment is really different from the expected (assumed) result he will rewrite it.

You're mixing up an assumption with a hypothesis.  A scientist will always have a hypothesis when beginning an experiment.  This is part of the scientific method.  Rarely, does a scientist start an experiment just by thinking "hey lets try putting this and this together and see what happens!"  At least not anymore.  A hypothesis is formed by taking into account other theories and demonstrated facts, and extrapolating the result of your experiment before you perform it.  You then verify the results of your experiment against your hypothesis.  No assumptions involved.

An assumption is something that you draw conclusions based upon and which will factor into your conclusion as a conditional.  For example, if I assume that the number n is a negative number, then I conclude (based on previously proven rules and axioms) that the number 0-n is positive if my assumption was correct.  I can draw no conclusion if my assumption is not true.  And there is a lot of this in science.  That's science.  Prove or demonstrate certain things under certain conditions and eventually build up a framework of understanding that lets you prove it under other conditions or assumptions.  It's a process.  A thorough one.

As for all the stuff about scientific papers getting thrown out because they disagree with the current accepted model or scientists of higher renown pushing untrue papers through: You're going to have to show some example of someone who has a scientifically verifiable conclusion that is important enough to get published who can't get published for whatever reason.  Yes, some untrue things get published, but they later get disproven and reconsidered.  It happens.  Similarly, some true stuff might get passed over for publishing at first for whatever reasons.  Scientists with good reputations have good reputations for a reason, and scientists with bad reputations have bad reputations for a reason.  Publishing something that later proves false will definitely result in a hit to your reputation.  That's not different from other professions. 

Taking and believing the conclusions of scientists without personally verifying or repeating their experiments is necessary for forward progress.  Otherwise everyone would be tied up trying to build their own particle accelerator.  If one of your assumptions gets disproven, then it upends all the science based upon it and we start over.  That's the self-policing nature of it.

I just don't understand the aversion.

Note: I'm just defending science here, not taking swipes at anyone's beliefs or right to believe here.  I think we can all hold hands and sing kumbaya.

[Nacho]

Evidently, Misj' wants to criticise science using as a weapon the faults of very few. Let' s conceed this to him. Actually, yeah, Mendel wrote his conclussions before having material time to complete the experiments! He is right somehow...

Let' s assume that it' s possible to attack a whole concept by the faults of a minority.

So, can we start talking about Jihads, Holy wars, pederastian priests, religious anti abortion terrorists, false healers, false tele-preachers who ask your money for miracles, the inquisition and the abbuses of the missioners?

No? Ouch... I thought you wanted to start talking about rotten apples... Don't you? Damn! Okay... Let's get back on topic.

Thanks.

[SSH]

All evasives. Okay, gotcha, when a "believer" is asked about their beliefs, they evade the debate.

Says the guy who when I pointed out problems with Big Bang and showed that it wasn't proof said nothing more than "I believe in Big Bang". Who's the one with blind faith now, eh?

[Tuomas]

Or maybe they just finally grew bored of this fucking bullshit?

There are, evidently, some other better threads to follow... Like, for instance, your weekly "Help me with my laptop" one.

I don't get your point :S That one died, so there's nothing to follow, this one is still going Also, see what SSH said. And when I replied, well, a religious person didn't evade replies, he replied for... 10 pages now? Once he evades  a couple of questions you spit on him? (a figure of speach). I'm just bored here by the way, so instead of debating I'm playing the guitar now.

[Misj']

Evidently, Misj' wants to criticise science using as a weapon the faults of very few.

And you base this (A. that I critisize science...which I don't, I criticize your impression of scientists and science, and B. that it are the faults of few) on exactly what? - I mean...you never said how many scientists you know personally, so I have to assume they are quite few.

Let' s conceed this to him. Actually, yeah, Mendel wrote his conclussions before having material time to complete the experiments! He is right somehow...

It's generally accepted in statistics that Mendel did mould the results to fit his preferred outcome. In biology these statistics are disputed however, and not all statisticians agree with this view on statistics either.

Let' s assume that it' s possible to attack a whole concept by the faults of a minority.

You guys are doing that the whole time. The entire Christianity was attacked based on an incomplete transcript of the Pope regarding HIV in Africa (to give just one example).

So, can we start talking about Jihads, Holy wars, pederastian priests, religious anti abortion terrorists, false healers, false tele-preachers who ask your money for miracles, the inquisition and the abbuses of the missioners?

No? Ouch... I thought you wanted to start talking about rotten apples... Don't you? Damn! Okay...

Oh, I love it how you answer your own question for me...that way I don't have to think for myself, and be subject to your superior brain. And just in case you didn't get the sarcasm: be my guest to discuss them. The thing is: I'm not discussing religion, I'm discussing your view of science. Of course I'm not allowed to talk about that, because while you kept complaining that you can say everything about anything with the exception of religion it turns out that you can say everything about anything except the faults in science. Coming to close to your own comfort-zone? - This is exactly what I consider hypocritical about certain atheists: they can point at the faults in other people, but they themselves are perfect. Sure you are.

Ps. my appologies for the sarcasm...

[Misj']

I'm not sure what you're talking about.  Perhaps it's a difference in semantics, but I have to respectfully disagree with this.  If you mean the "Truth" or "Why" in the religious sense, then yeah, whatevs.  We're in totally different ballparks here.  But if you mean "truth" as in facts and "why" as in why certain things do what they do or react to other things in the way that they do, then science is all about those things.  We know "how" an apple falls to the Earth (accelerating towards the center of Earth's gravity at 9.8 meters per second per second) and we know "why" the apple falls to the Earth (a natural phenomenon of mass attracting other mass that we named gravity).

the 'why certain things do what they do' is a mechanical question and therefore concerns science; as I stated in my earlier post. So what part did you not agree with here?

You're mixing up an assumption with a hypothesis.

No I'm not. I'm full-well aware of the difference between a theory, a hypothesis, and an assumption. I was talking about assumptions.

A hypothesis is formed by taking into account other theories and demonstrated facts, and extrapolating the result of your experiment before you perform it. You then verify the results of your experiment against your hypothesis. No assumptions involved.

Again...this is only true when looking directly at mechanisms (objective observations)...than in that case in complete agreement with my previous statement. On the other hand, it's not the way science works in reality. To use an example from phdcomics:

I can draw no conclusion if my assumption is not true.  And there is a lot of this in science.  That's science.  Prove or demonstrate certain things under certain conditions and eventually build up a framework of understanding that lets you prove it under other conditions or assumptions.

However, the term 'assumption' was used as a quote from KhrisMUC where is was placed as opposed to the way religious people do it. As a consequence, the therm assumption was used for its non-scientific meaning, and was therefore completely appropriate here.

I just don't understand the aversion.

Note: I'm just defending science here, not taking swipes at anyone's beliefs or right to believe here.

I have no aversion of science what so ever. But neither do I put my faith in science. I have an aversion of people who are not scientists who claim to understand entirely how the scientific community works and thinks, and look at it as some sort of Utopia. Because their 'faith' (my apologies for the word because I have no intention of making it sound religious) is based on lack of knowledge and misconceptions...and possibly the Discovery Channel.

Ps. my appologies for the double post.

[Jim Reed]

Ahh, you people make me think of children squabling over a new toy.

As I said, I belive ib God allmighty, and will say this now:. God exists and science is looking for the wong things most of the time.

I saw prayer healing work, many times, and have proven to myself that going against God's rules is very bad for health. So, for example, if you hate someone, you may develop a heart condition and die rather earlier than normal. As for certain people living over hundred yeras, I vouch, if they actually lived so long, that they sinned less than people that lived less.

The nature laws, are the same ones as God's and yes, animals have souls, but are different from humans, as they can't think about themselves.

Cheers!

[Vince Twelve]

You're mixing up an assumption with a hypothesis.

No I'm not. I'm full-well aware of the difference between a theory, a hypothesis, and an assumption. I was talking about assumptions.

Then you I believe you were misinterpreting what KhrisMUC was talking about.

A scientist tries to make as few assumptions as humanly possible

He is talking about assumptions as I defined them above.  Taking a certain idea as truth regardless of its proven validity and factoring it as a conditional into their hypothesis or conclusion.  It has no bearing on the outcome of an experiment or the conclusion of a paper except that, if you make certain assumptions, you must preface your results with an "If my assumption X holds true, then we can conclude Y"

Only if the outcome of the experiment is really different from the expected (assumed) result he will rewrite it.

Using the definition of assumption that Khris and I are using, the expected result is not an assumption, it is a hypothesis.  This is why I thought I needed to explain the difference.  I apologize if you meant to use the word hypothesis there and if you understand that an assumption is avoided if possible by scientist who would rather base their hypotheses and experiments on proven axioms or well-established theories.  Then we can agree that KhrisMUC's assertion (the first half of the sentence at least, not the second half about religious people) about scientist trying to make as few assumptions as possible is accurate.

As for the low integrity of some studies or experiments due to them wanting to please their bosses, or maybe to get glory and fame for themselves, these things rarely make it into the backbone of science.  These things get overturned on further study or examination.  Getting published does not make it something blindly accepted by the entirety of humanity. 

So hundreds of papers are published every year on many topics big and small from many authors reputable and less than.  And yes, some people might parrot the conclusion of a published paper without checking the process involved, but I'm not sure how one could argue that it's any less valid than parroting the conclusions of a certain other published book that I found in my hotel nightstand.  It's certainly not any worse than taking a webcomic's sendup of the scientific method when used in a capitalist society (I imagine this kind of thing happens at, for example, drug companies trying to get their new pill to market) and suggesting that it somehow undermines established scientific principles or the millenia worth of conclusions of scientists around the world.

Published papers get overturned and disproven as new information is available.  New papers get published in their place.  Hopefully the people who had been referencing that paper's incorrect conclusions will take the time to correct themselves.

This kind of self-policing means that, yes, there will be some falsehoods spread, but for the most part it's going to get cleaned up soon, especially in the important areas of study.  Hopefully we can agree that good science is good and bad science is bad, but bad science shouldn't mean that science itself is in anyway flawed or untrue.

Science doesn't ask for your faith, though it thanks you for helping fund itself by purchasing all the computers, cars, and medicines that it produces.

Religious texts, on the other hand, don't change like a scientific paper might upon further inspection, though the interpretation of them may change over time.  But with so many people having so many different interpretations, and no real way to demonstrably prove one interpretation to be correct, there's no way to know, other than through your own internal faith, that the "Truth" that you are speaking of is the correct one.

I think that's the difference between science and religion.  I'm not at all coming down on faith or belief here.  Just trying to show that science isn't something that really needs to be "believed" or "not believed" in.

(I am enjoying this civil debate with you Misj and some of the others in the thread, I hope we can continue to keep our conversation above some of the other less constructive conversation.  Because I love these kinds of conversations, I just hate it when they deteriorate into blah.)

[Adrian  ]

If you can't trust someone to come along and look at a orange and conclude this is an orange, because it's just a theory you may as well throw your clothes in the air and worship the orange as your new god. (after giving it a face with marker pen, you're not entirely crazy)

Personally I think all existence has been contracting and expanding for an infinite amount of time (I have no scientific evidence it's just an idea)
but people have a hard to comprehending that or any other theory, it feels better if something external has created existence, (like a projection of your own mind? that you could relate to? Something more human?)

but as a Christian you're still posed with the same question on creation, if you are 100% sure there has to be a start and a end (I find people have a hard time truly comprehending infinite), who/what made god. The belief is god has always existed, in my opinion it's more crazy to believe god is infinite and has made existence, then existence itself to be infinite. 

I've always thought of the idea of god to be a projection from the believer (that's why he's portrayed as being so human), essentially talking to themselves, to externalise what is internal to all of us (our own thoughts and sub conscious)

unfortanately people have used this comfort of externalising things to to their advantage, once you've taken god from someone (by telling them god is really like santa watching man kind, then he judges you at death) you can hold them to ransom with lies and false hope, the idea of god has been manipulated to be a one to many relationship. When you drop all the preconceptions of what god is (absolutely everything you've been told about god, and just work from the ground up: god is real and god is all powerful to your life) and look around you find you are god.

Wish more people would literally believe in themselves because organised religion really annoys me, especially when they start buying up ad space near my house and post things like "Is this it?".

Because for one "Is this it?" is really pessimistic and draws people who feel desperate in, for two, existence is truly beautiful and for some religious marketing guys to go "oh is this it, your nonreligious life is really shit, you can only find more through Christianity" is really offensive to me.

[Akatosh]

I saw prayer healing work, many times

[citation needed] - so far, all (valid) scientific studies have shown prayer to have no statistically significant effect on, say, cancer mortality rates. But yeah, science is utterly helpless against the awesome power of CLAIMS and ANECDOTES! Also, all that praying while rejecting blood infusions sure does Jehova's Witnesses a world of good.

going against God's rules is very bad for health

Leviticus states not to wear clothes made of two different fabrics. So far, wearing cotton/polyester combinations hasn't caused me to go up in flames. In fact, it's pretty comfortable.

As for certain people living over hundred yeras, I vouch, if they actually lived so long, that they sinned less than people that lived less.

The job of a soldier is, basically, to kill other soldiers.

According to the Bible, killing is a sin. (And a bad one at that!)

There are still some soliders around from WWI, being among the oldest living human beings  at ages (~)103 and upwards.

Huh.

The nature laws, are the same ones as God's

Last time I checked, the ten commandments didn't include "And the value of pi shall be impossible to calculate exactly, but approach 3.1415926535 and so on". Or "in reactions, every elemental shall strive to obtain a certain amount of valence electrones".

they can't think about themselves

Dolphins and certain subspecies of humanoid apes (I think it was chimpanzees) have shown signs of self-awareness, such as being able to recognise themselves in a mirror, and understanding what the reflection meant. Does that mean we'll meet dolphins in the afterlife?

[Nacho]

Andrew, I replied to you... It is just that the answer was not the one you liked...

[Misj']

A scientist tries to make as few assumptions as humanly possible

He is talking about assumptions as I defined them above.  Taking a certain idea as truth regardless of its proven validity and factoring it as a conditional into their hypothesis or conclusion.  It has no bearing on the outcome of an experiment or the conclusion of a paper except that, if you make certain assumptions, you must preface your results with an "If my assumption X holds true, then we can conclude Y"

That is exactly what I was talking about. Scientists very often use assumptions that they do not define (and that are based on little more than their own idea of the truth) but are valid to experiment. The sentence "if my assumption X holds true then" is rarely used, because hardly any reviewer would accept it; doubt is not acceptable in scientific papers (well, not if you want to publish anyway). Instead one would use something along the lines of "the most likely explanation of this result is Y"; thus establishing Y as a fact.

I apologize if you meant to use the word hypothesis there and if you understand that an assumption is avoided if possible by scientist who would rather base their hypotheses and experiments on proven axioms or well-established theories.

I disagree that scientists - in reality - try to avoid assumptions. Also, much of what you call a hypothesis is in fact an assumption (or even merely an idea) because it's not based on established ideas but merely on the scientist's own opinion.

And yes, some people might parrot the conclusion of a published paper without checking the process involved, but I'm not sure how one could argue that it's any less valid than parroting the conclusions of a certain other published book that I found in my hotel nightstand.  It's certainly not any worse than taking a webcomic's sendup of the scientific method...

Unless of course I did not parrot the web-comic, but rather selected it because it quite accurately describes the way many (not all!) scientific experiments are conducted.

It's certainly not any worse than taking a webcomic's sendup of the scientific method when used in a capitalist society (I imagine this kind of thing happens at, for example, drug companies trying to get their new pill to market) and suggesting that it somehow undermines established scientific principles or the millenia worth of conclusions of scientists around the world.

Science nowadays is based mostly on money...not only within the pharmaceutics-industry, but everywhere. Also the description in the comic is much closer to the reality than one might believe...or wish.

Science doesn't ask for your faith, though it thanks you for helping fund itself by purchasing all the computers, cars, and medicines that it produces.

computers, cars, and medicines aren't produced by science. Science is about the mechanics, but it's 'technique' that creates the application. Sure, technique and science go hand in hand on many things (and often science is behind of technology), but they are not the same. It's a common misconception.

Religious texts, on the other hand, don't change like a scientific paper might upon further inspection, though the interpretation of them may change over time.

Last time I checked the article Singer and Nichols published in science in 1972 didn't change a whole lot since it was written. Sure, others added to it in other papers, but that is also true for religious texts as far as I know. Maybe these texts won't be bundled with the same easy-to-carry format, but can't hold that against them.

But with so many people having so many different interpretations, and no real way to demonstrably prove one interpretation to be correct, there's no way to know, other than through your own internal faith, that the "Truth" that you are speaking of is the correct one.

I think that's the difference between science and religion.  I'm not at all coming down on faith or belief here.  Just trying to show that science isn't something that really needs to be "believed" or "not believed" in.

But if different people have so many different interpretations, than at least the assumption that religion is static rather than dynamic is highly unlikely (religion as a whole, not on certain specific points).  The same holds true in science: many interpretations (and some technical developments) ensure that science is not static but rather dynamic. The problem is though, that the scientific world is not that open to these dynamics as one would expect them to be.

I disagree by the way that there is no 'believe' or 'not believe' in science...I think it only looks like that from a distance, but not from 'within'.

(I am enjoying this civil debate with you Misj and some of the others in the thread, I hope we can continue to keep our conversation above some of the other less constructive conversation.  Because I love these kinds of conversations, I just hate it when they deteriorate into blah.)

I'm glad you do, and I'll try to stick with it...although I will be sarcastic at times. It's just who I am (well...one of the many things that I am).

Wish more people would literally believe in themselves because organised religion really annoys me, especially when they start buying up ad space near my house and post things like "Is this it?".

Because for one "Is this it?" is really pessimistic and draws people who feel desperate in, for two, existence is truly beautiful and for some religious marketing guys to go "oh is this it, your nonreligious life is really shit, you can only find more through Christianity" is really offensive to me.

This I completely agree with...such people should be shot; well, not literally of course because I'm not going to encourage hatred or violence.

There are many fantastic non-believers, and many really terrible believers. The whole "we're better because we believe in one deity or another" is offensive and gives good people a bad name (this is also where I agree with Nacho...even though I hate to admit that I agree with Nacho on anything of course ). If you're so much better than proof it to me by making the world (or at least the world around you) a better place; and stop bugging me about it. I'm not saying all (or even the majority) of religious people act and talk like this...but those who do annoy me beyond measurement.

Ps. by the way the add as you describe it reminds my of a 'recognize the first signs of a depression' add that they had in the Netherlands a year (or something) ago...really depressing, and very annoying.

[Jim Reed]

[citation needed] - so far, all (valid) scientific studies have shown prayer to have no statistically significant effect on, say, cancer mortality rates. But yeah, science is utterly helpless against the awesome power of CLAIMS and ANECDOTES! Also, all that praying while rejecting blood infusions sure does Jehova's Witnesses a world of good.

Well, as I'm not prone to say things I can't stand behind, I'll say that I do prayer healing, alebit it has some angles, if you are sick, just PM me and I'll se what I can do.

Leviticus states not to wear clothes made of two different fabrics. So far, wearing cotton/polyester combinations hasn't caused me to go up in flames. In fact, it's pretty comfortable.

Well, I don't know about different material clothes being covered in the ten commandments, but if you would break any of them, bad things will happen. As it did happen to me and other persons. As I can assume we are both humans/people/men we all fall under the same cathegory, so we are all acountible for our actions, therefore everybody human will suffer when they break any of the ten commandments. Also that has some angles too.

The job of a soldier is, basically, to kill other soldiers.

According to the Bible, killing is a sin. (And a bad one at that!)

There are still some soliders around from WWI, being among the oldest living human beings  at ages (~)103 and upwards.

Huh.

I can't seem to rember that it says: Thou shall not kill, it's bad.
But on a side note, killing is forgivable, unlike acting against the Holy spirit, for example

[quote ]
Last time I checked, the ten commandments didn't include "And the value of pi shall be impossible to calculate exactly, but approach 3.1415926535 and so on". Or "in reactions, every elemental shall strive to obtain a certain amount of valence electrones".
[/quote]

I'm not good at mathematics, or chemistry, but I as I recall, the bigger/more massive holds more energy than a smaller one, while a more energy powerfull man holds more power over things than a man of less energy. As my english is not very good I have a hard time to explain this and not to make myself missunderstood. But in my language (Croatian: Jaci kaci.) means: the more powerfull hooks more. I can't explain more, I'm sorry, It's a language thing. I hope you understand.

[qoute]
Dolphins and certain subspecies of humanoid apes (I think it was chimpanzees) have shown signs of self-awareness, such as being able to recognise themselves in a mirror, and understanding what the reflection meant. Does that mean we'll meet dolphins in the afterlife?
[/quote]

Well, I know they can see something in the mirror.
[qoute]recognise themselves[/qoute]
I don't know who could have gotten in the mind of an animal to comprehend what do they recognise, as it is a thought, and I don't know that it is possible to know what others think.

But the teaching system that governs my religius belifs, lies on knowledge passed on from teachers (amongst other things) that know more than me.
In this instance, I am yet unable to prove it's truthfullnes, but I will say that, as the other knowledge that I gathered in the same way (from a the same, more knowedgable man) was truthfull, I think that this one is truth, too.