Comments on: Possibility of evidence

By: Joakim Rosqvist

Joakim Rosqvist — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:44:37 +0000

MacGowan: The idea of a message in PI comes from Carl Sagan’s novel “Contact”. There is clearly no way for us or even a hypotetical more advanced alien species to force a message into the early decimals of PI. That is why a long and detailed message – if it were to be found there – could be interpreted as coming form a supernatural entity.
(Although one might argue that sufficiently advanced aliens might have access to technology able to remote-control our computers such that they would “find” any suitable message and were we could not detect the manipulation).

As for Galileo being in house arrest, he partly had himself to blame. He implied that one would have to be an idiot to believe that the churchs’s version was true. Tycho Brahe, Kepler and others before him compared and contrasted Ptolemaois’ and Copernicus’ models without getting into trouble with the church.

By: Dr Donald B. MacGowan

Dr Donald B. MacGowan — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:58:25 +0000

Quote: “The problem with Western belief systems, science and religion, is they are quick to throw out that which is new. It takes decades, sometimes centuries, for the West to change its mind. How long did we believe the Sun revolved around the Earth?”

What on Earth…? It is precisely BECAUSE western religion (mainly the Roman Catholic Church) suppressed new scientific discoveries and throttled scientists, for more than a THOUSAND years, that ideas such as heliocentrism took so long to catch on in general in Western thought–it wasn’t news to the scientists (those who were not burnt at the stake or under house arrest). Science, in fact, is all about finding new data, re-collating old data into new hypotheses, spawning and evaluating and testing new ideas, validating and falsifying them, and incorporating the good ones into new hypotheses and moving on. See how many times I got to use the word “new”?

The problem is not with what your commenter has said so much as with his astounding ignorance of the history of science and the arrogance with which he puts forth his intellectually bankrupt nonsense. You, unfortunately, did not take a great opportunity to do a little education where a very embarrassing void of knowledge existed.

As the author of three bogs myself I know it can be hard to continually think up new topics, day after day, to write about–here is a brilliant one that should occupy you for years and spur much comment that will boost your readership.

You’re welcome.

Oh, and ideclare? Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter…in other words, how many spans of its diameter will a wheel make if it is rotated once along its circumference. Has nothing to do with any godz, mysteries, vague know-nothing-new-age-warm-and-fuzzy bullshit. Very concrete. God does not hide in basic fundamentals of the High School classes you failed to comprehend. FAIL.

By: Born again Atheist

Born again Atheist — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:11:26 +0000

I think the fact that God does not leave himself open to be questioned by science is suspect. In most religions God is capable of manifestation in a form that is testable by Science, whether that form be a burning bush, a talking donkey or a man who was conceived by supernatural means. However, God has ceased to manifest himself in these ways in a time in which enough is known about chemistry and biology to determine if these things can be explained by known natural processes or if these things are beyond our experience.

It is true that Science will never say that there is no natural explanation for a phenomenon. For all we know, God himself is a natural phenomenon which we currently do not have the knowlegde and tools to test. However, we do know that natural phenomena were often attributed to God or gods when people did not have an explanation for those phenomena through their limited technology and it would be a large step toward re-confirming the existence of God if there were a testable manifestation that defied understanding by our science.

By: Joakim Rosqvist

Joakim Rosqvist — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:25:20 +0000

That’d be up to the definition of “supernatural”. Let’s say some entity living in World has a computer that can run a simulation of what we now perceive as our universe including every single particle interaction and has designed the simulation to deliberately include both us and that message in (early digits of) PI. If the message also specifies some way of communicating with the “entity” and other parts of World, we might learn how World works and figure out how and why the simulation with us in it was created. I.e. “natural” – the domain of science – would then be anything pertaining to World.

By: ideclare

ideclare — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 04:55:51 +0000

I think that, in an extreme case and after thorough investigation, it could be argued that something is inexplicable by science. For example, if it turned out that the digits of PI encoded an obvious, unambiguous, detailed message about the existence of God, and that this message existed in any language you cared to use, then I think you would have a heck of a time arguing that a non-supernatural, scientific explanation might be found in the future.

By: Joakim Rosqvist

Joakim Rosqvist — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:38:39 +0000

How could science ever come to the conclusion that “there is no possible explanation” for some phenomena? I don’t see that outcome being part of the scientific method. You could always come up with some new idea tomorrow for a problem that we are clueless about today.