Showing posts with label law. Show all posts
Showing posts with label law. Show all posts

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Mr. Fire Update (Part 3)

No luck with Mr. Fire or Trish. I guess they don't want to talk to poor nobody me. That's alright because I found another person advocating non-sense to introduce to you. David Dutch the author of the blog In The Footsteps of Giants is an advocate of the Secret and an author. What does David have to say about LOA (Law Of Attraction)? His opening question will reveal a lot to us.

Do you doubt the existence of the law of attraction?..........

You may have heard of the film, ‘The Secret’ even watched it but still dismiss the law of attraction as Mumbo Jumbo.

Or is there really a force in nature that will allow you to use your secret mind to succeed where you have never succeeded before simply by harnessing the power of visuailzation and using affirmations?

Let’s look around nature and see what natural laws exist. Well there is the main one that keeps us all on this small planet of ours; you know the one that has always been there but was best explained by Sir Isaac Newton and his famous apple.

It does not matter whether or not an apple actually fell on his head the law of gravity has always been there and hopefully it always will be here, as I have no fancy for drifting off into space without a spaceship..........

Is the law of gravity simple? Is the law of Chemistry simple? Is the law of physics simple? Is the law of mathematics simple? Is the law of logic simple? In as much as they are there despite you. You may not understand them but you accept them because of the evidence you have every day of their workings.

Look around at every successful person, every goal achiever they are living evidence of the law of attraction working in their lives.

The day you stop questioning the validity of the law of attraction is the day you will allow it to work in your life.

Oh where to start? What is David really saying here? Well, he is trying to convince his audience that the LOA is like any other sort of natural law, they are there whether you want to "believe" in them or not. David is trying to convince his audience that LOA essentially is a scientific principle (or should be treated like one).

What David doesn't mention is that gravity is testable along with all other theories/laws of nature, they are also tentative. While gravitational theory may never be replaced, it could be if a better explanation came along to explain what we observe. So if LOA is a theory explaining natural events then it is possible to test it. Remember, all theories/laws are subject to verification. When you posit a theory you must be able to show what would "prove" or "disprove" it (I use the word prove, but you don't ever really prove anything in the absolute sense, everything is tentative).

Gravity, we can test that easily (for the most part). If I throw a baseball and it lands on the earth 10ft in front of me (I know, it was a very poor throw) we can say that gravity is the force pulling the ball to the earth (the earth has mass as does the ball, smaller objects are attracted to larger ones, so the earth bends space-time to attract the ball). Now, the more we run that experiment and the more we get those results we can show gravity in action, in other words, we are verifying the theory of gravitation. What would falsify gravity? Using our baseball experiment, if I threw the ball and it just kept going and never landed, that would be a start. Or if we found that bodies with mass didn't attract each other. That would be trouble for gravity.

The point I am getting to here is that whether you doubt the theory of gravitation or not is not dependant on whether it works or not. David would agree with me here But he is saying that you have to believe in the LOA in order for it to work for you.

The day you stop questioning the validity of the law of attraction is the day you will allow it to work in your life.

Whether you question the validity of gravity or not, it works, it has been tested, and even if gravity is falsified there would be another testable explanation put in it's place. If LOA is a natural law (or a theory explaining nature) then what tests can we perform to verify or falsify it?
David uses this example to show that the LOA is real:

Look around at every successful person, every goal achiever they are living evidence of the law of attraction working in their lives.


Has David ever heard of Occam's Razor? In short, Occam's Razor is a philosophical principle that states the solution that makes the fewest assumptions is probably the correct one. For example: I showed up at work today. Is it more plausible that I drove my car to work or that Scotty on the Star ship Enterprise beamed me there? So are successful people successful because they believe that there is a LOA or because those who are successful typically have traits/skills such as: a positive attitude, honesty, hard working, multitasking skills, communication skills, the ability to commit to projects and so on?

How are we going to verify that it is the LOA that is allowing these people to be successful? This is where I am going to leave it to you the readers. Tell me how we can verify LOA and also how we can falsify it. I have a few ideas myself but I want to hear yours. I will post the best ones here on Skeptic Dave. And think outside of the box, be creative, and see what you come up with. If anything it will be great brain exercise.

D

Monday, March 9, 2009

Joe Vitale = The Lose

I usually try to stay away from name calling and strong language on this blog, but then I found out about this asshole. Why do I call him an asshole? Probably because he tells you that positive thoughts will give you everything you want. We aren't talking about the healthy (reality based) thinking positively here. We are talking about The Secret type of positive thinking that maintains that you can have a sports car magically appear in your driveway by believing that you have a sports car in your driveway. What exactly is the mechanism that allows this to happen? Let me answer that..............

THERE ISN'T ONE, IT IS ALL JUST A BUNCH OF HOKEY NEW AGE SELF HELP B.S.!

So, I had to comment on Joe's (a.k.a. Mr. Fire) blog about such non-sense. Here is what I wrote:

"So are you implying that someone with HIV shouldn’t go to a doctor because if they are positive and believe in LOA, then the universe will heal them of HIV? What about amputees, will they get their limbs back if they are positive enough? Are starving children in Africa (or anywhere else) not thinking positive enough, and that’s why they are starving? I guess all of the seniors who get ripped off by con-artists weren’t thinking positively enough either."

ARRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!

Stay tuned, I may get a response for my comment, we will see.


D

Monday, February 2, 2009

Ray Comfort......If you only had a clue (part 2)

Ray says in his newest post at http://www.pulltheplugonatheism.com/art16.shtml:

When an atheist understands the impossibility of his belief that nothing made everything, he often defaults to the belief that the universal is eternal. But that won’t work. It’s a scientific impossibility. The Law of Thermodynamics proves that the universe cannot be eternal. Everything material runs down in time (even the sun will wear out). Leave a rock for a billion years and it will crumble to dust.

There are only a couple of things wrong with the above:

1) The atheist doesn't necessarily think that the universe is eternal (and the atheist certainly doesn't "believe" like Ray believes. Ray's meaning of belief has to do with faith, which is belief in a proposition without any evidence. This is opposed to "belief" or accepting tentatively a proposition which could be proven wrong. The point: Faith can't be proven wrong.).

2) Now Ray seems to misunderstand the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. What is the second law of thermodynamics (you may be asking)?

"No process is possible in which the sole result is the transfer of energy from a cooler to a hotter body." [Atkins, 1984, The Second Law, pg. 25]

I don't know what the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics has to do with whether the universe is eternal or not. The universe is expanding (what is expanding it, we aren't sure yet) and it is possible that the universe will keep expanding, possibly forever. Even if the universe stopped expanding and all the energy in the universe turned to heat and became unusable, it wouldn't mean that the universe isn't eternal. The universe would have just reached maximum entropy/randomness. At that point, who knows what would happen. There are theories that the universe has "banged" and collapsed over and over again. The point is, we just don't know enough about what makes up the universe to know all of what is going on (yet?).

Below is an example of how the 2nd Law works when applying it to Earth:

Energy and Order in Biological Systems

The concept of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics suggests that systems naturally progress from order to disorder. If so, how do biological systems develop and maintain such a high degree of order? Is this a violation of the second law of thermodynamics?

Order can be produced with an expenditure of energy, and the order associated with life on the earth is produced with the aid of energy from the sun.

For example, plants use energy from the sun in tiny energy factories called chloroplasts. Using chlorophyll in the process called photosynthesis, they convert the sun's energy into storable form in ordered sugar molecules. In this way, carbon and water in a more disordered state are combined to form the more ordered sugar molecules.

In animal systems there are also small structures within the cells called mitochondria which use the energy stored in sugar molecules from food to form more highly ordered structures.

(Diagram from: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/bioentropy.html#c1)


Also, for a more in depth explanation of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics see:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo.html

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/thermo/creationism.html


http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/seclaw.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_law_of_thermodynamics


Ray goes even further:

If the universe was eternal, it would be a trillion billion (plus infinite time) years old, and would have turned to dust a thousand billion trillion years ago. Only that which is non-material, dwelling outside the dimension of time, can be eternal. God qualifies for both. He is Spirit (non-material), and He dwells outside of time.

1) The universe would be infinitely old and would have turned to dust a thousand billion trillion years ago. Funny, he doesn't show any mathematical formula for this nor does he show any sources. Don't believe me? See it for yourself (http://www.pulltheplugonatheism.com/art16.shtml)

2) Ray goes for the jugular and states that god beats his own laws of entropy because he is non-material and dwells outside of time. Though, Ray doesn't give much thought to the theological implications to this statement. If god is outside of time - space, then there is no way for anything within time - space to know of, let alone communicate with such a being. Even if we allow Ray's premise, there is no way to prove that it is his god that made the universe.

And Ray finishes with this whopper:

If we believe that there is no Hell, we will live our life accordingly. If we believe Hell exists and that there will be divine retribution (ultimate justice), then we need a Savior to wash our sins away before the Day of Judgment. God provided one. Read the Gospel of John to see the details.

The above will be tackled tomorrow, so..........same time, same station!!

D

For further reading on the Big Bang and space-time check out:

Big Bang by Simon Singh

Fabric of The Cosmos by Brian Greene

Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking

Universe In a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking

Road To Reality by Rodger Penrose