He may be, but I still won't bother thinking about him until some shred of evidence exists.

 

What would you need faith for, if you had evidence?

 

I think that was my point.

 

What good is evidence without faith?

 

Its as good as evidence with faith, its the same evidence.

 

It's not as good. Evidence is meaningless. What would you do with evidence of god? Faith on the other hand, that's a strength you don't have.

 

Prove he exists and destroy your faith.

 

Answer my question, and destroy yours.

 

Define god

 

The principal object of faith. A supernatural being which is thought to be the architect and supreme arbiter of the universe.

 

I'll save the explanation of string theory/ M-theory for another thread.

Does String Theory have practical applications today?
No.

Can you think of practical applications it may have in the future?
I can't think of any, or even remotely conceive of any. However, that's like asking me to invent something that has yet been invented. I think over the coming years there will be some practical attempts to find out whether string theory is correct or not. These scientific endeavours, the actual experiments designed to find out more about the universe could very well bring forward new inventions and applications. CERN for example (where the large hadron collider exists) the world wide web was born. Also the accelerators at these kinds of places needed to measure their experiments, medical scanners such as MRI/fMRI are direct copies of some of the equipment that was used. So there are often spinoffs, but that's not why we do the science. We do it to unlock the secrets of the universe.


As for my personal opinion. I'm not sold on the ideas of String Theory and M-Theory. For balance I'm equally sceptical of the alternate idea of Loop Quantum Gravity. Until someone can find me some evidence of the extra 7 dimensions, I'm going to hedge by bets that string theory is completely wrong. At the moment, unfortunately it does seem to be the most plausible idea. Ask me again in a decade.

 

Everything I know about chemistry and physics I taught myself in the seventh and eighth grade with a Gilbert Chemistry set and my own reading. Everything I learned from courses I took in the twelfth grade I forgot.

I understand electrons, protons, neutrons, positrons, and antiprotons. I understand atoms, and the way they come together to form chemicals. I understand alpha rays, beta rays, and gamma rays. I have some understanding of the light spectrum and radio waves. Beyond that my eyes glaze over.

 

deviousdave,

To change the subject, what to you think of the possibility of life, especially intelligent life, on other planets? I am sure it exists. I am surprised that we have not detected radio waves from civilizations on other planets.

It is conceivable to me that they have found a more advanced way of communicating than by radio waves.

 

As I really don't know, I'll not try to deny the force of God. I tend to think God is a force not a being. No historical evidence supports anyone seeing him or her. As far as faith is concerned, have you ever been around a true born again Christian? I'm not talking about a fraud, they abound in all religions, but a genuine Christian. If everyone was a true genuine Christian we would truly have the Utopia every intelligent human desires. The progressives would be happy, the conservatives would be happy, every human on the planet would live a much better life than they live now. Including the billionaires, they would finally find happiness. The quest to make more money and gain more power would leave them. The poor and homeless people would not be poor or homeless anymore. Healthcare would be much better. Humans might even finally rid themselves of illness because they would not do things that contribute to poor health and disease. Something to think about. Jesus had the right idea. I'd say humans would be better to scrap all other religions that in anyway promote death and destruction and live by the teachings of Jesus or similar enlightened deity's of the past. Yes that would include the Old Testament, Islam and all other religions that condone death and destruction. May the Force of good will be with you.

 

I think life on other planets is almost certain. There are a few hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe, each of those galaxies have a hundred billion or so stars, and orbiting most of those stars are planetary systems. On our planet, after it cooled to a temperature which could support life, it only took a few million years for life to begin, that's no time at all on a cosmic scale. The fact that it took such a short period of time, that suggests to me, that life is not that difficult to get started. It would actually surprise me if we didn't find evidence indicating that there might be signs of life elsewhere within my lifetime. Will we ever communicate with intelligent life elsewhere? I think that is very unlikely, and may take a millennia or more before we are capable of being close to that.

And yes, I could conceive of a multitude of ways that intelligent life could be communicating with each other without us detecting them, or us even being capable of detecting them/

 

Sounds like a belief, without proof.

 

We read from the Book of Adams:
And he said unto them, "Behold the babel fish, for I have heard the cries of my people. They thirst for proof. They hunger to know their God is real. Look upon the babel fish and marvel at the glory of the Lord."
And the people beheld the babel fish and were much amazed. In that time there was among them a man named Spurious and he meditated upon the babel fish and these words he spoke to the multitude, "Submission of proof presupposes doubt, for no man ever attempted to prove something for which there was no doubt."
The people marveled at his words, for they knew, if God doubts the existence of a thing, it cannot exist."

 

It is a guess, but an educated or at least a logical one. It's not a fact, it's not science, it's my opinion. It is not a sacredly held belief, thus I will happily change my opinion if any evidence comes along which shows otherwise.

 

BG is gone now.