CALVIN GOT IT RIGHT
By Glenn Shaver
THE ISSUE:
Every one has problems accepting that which we cannot see. We have been taught that only the visible world is real. We distance ourselves from an invisible or spiritual world. I want to show here that even the visible world can be different from what it seems to be.
WHAT WE SEE MAY BE UNREAL
Look at these optical illusions:
http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/
http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/illusion/illusions.htm#index
Conclusion:
What we see is not always reality.
EVEN OUR SENSE OF FEELING IS NOT ACCURATE.
Try this:
SENSE OF TOUCH
Issue:
Our evidence of truth is derived from what our senses tell us about our surrounding. We easily jump to the conclusion that what we see, hear, feel, smell or taste is reality and truth. This is not necessarily so.
Our sense of touch can be mistaken.
Try the following experiment preferably on someone else.
1. Use two marbles.
2. Show them to your friend.
3. Help your friend to cross his or her middle finger over top the pointer finger.
4. Adjust these fingers so the two ends are even.
5. Ask your friend to close their eyes.
6. Use only one of the marbles.
7. Place the marble at the center of the palm of your hand.
8. Place the ends of their crossed fingers so that each touch the top of the marble at the same time.
9. Rub their fingers back and forth on the marble.
10. Ask them how many marbles they feel.
11. They will feel two when there is only one.
Conclusion:
The sense of feeling does not always provide true evidence.
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3 comments:
Martin April 3rd, 2008 at 11:49 am
Brilliant! I love all your posts, the website and can’t wait to read more in the future!
Mike April 1st, 2008 at 7:04 pm
MIKE SENT A SECOND COMMENT
I didn’t realise that you were a Christian.
What you say would make sense if it wasn’t for the lack of evidence. For instances I am fairly mystified that you say Christians can easily prove natural laws can be broken. I suppose the big problem is that we don’t the laws of nature, for all we know god could be a controller behind natural laws or natural laws could be controllers in themselves.
So talking about natural laws as absolute known things to science is rather arrogant and simply wrong. For the time beging natural laws take an agnostic stance neither aiding god or not.
What I do know is that everything we have observed in the universe so far has obeyed the basic thermodynamic laws and relativity. This suggests to me a greater likelihood of a basic understanding of physics and the reduced chances of god.
So inadvertently the rest of your argument is completely meaningless unless you list all the natural laws of the cosmos and how we can break those laws listed. I can choose for the ball to fall by letting go, equally I could not let it drop by holding it consistently or placing it on a flat surface. This action does not break the natural laws, it is what science would come to expect.
Robert April 2nd, 2008 at 10:10 pm
ROBERT MADE THESE COMMENTS
What else can I say? Oh, yes, Glenn does not make sense. Hello Glenn! Are you reading this? It’d be good if you were.
There are a few points that I feel should be made, aside from Mike’s quite valid (as far as the little I know about thermodynamics etc goes):
1. An ‘athiest’ is someone who does not believe in God. One should not say “‘Athiests’ say that ‘natural laws cannot be broken’” because it is not necessary for an athiest to have faith in the unbreakability of natural laws in order for them to not believe in God: To summarize, there is a plethora of ‘reasons why’ athiests fail to believe in God, the belief that natural laws cannot be broken being, I find, quite a lesser-used one. Athiests don’t believe in God for all kinds of reasons, both absurd and sensible. Whilst it may coincidentally be true that all athiests believe that n l cn b b, it is unverifiable.
2. I have just read past your most recent post and have found you have invoked Pascal’s Wager. Pascal was wrong. Just because it might be better to believe in something, does not mean it is logically possible to.
For example, let’s say that scientists discover that, because of some incredible fluke of human evolution, or nature, people who believe eskimos are made of fairtrade coffee are constantly happy. Let us say that, for some reason, when the part of the human brain that deals with the concept of ‘eskimo’ is linked with the part that deals with the concept of ‘fairtrade coffee’, via the centre for ‘ardently held beliefs’, a massive amount of seratonin and adrenaline is accidentally released into the brain. So, people who believe this are much, much happier, constantly, and so also live longer, than those that don’t.
Despite scientists having worked this out, almost nobody can convince themselves that eskimos are made of fairtrade coffee. Oh, dear! The fact that it would be much better to believe in the coffee-eskimos is annoyingly redundant, because everybody knows that it is absurd to believe such a thing, the word ‘eskimos’ is no longer used to describe that race of people, the vast majority of humans have never even heard of Eskimos or the coffee brand, and besides, as it later transpires, the scientists were wrong.
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