From: L' Ermit (lhermit@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Jan 29 2002 - 14:36:44 MST
[David Hill 1.1*] Wow, such big words and so many of them. And me such a
poor pitiable high school dropout.
[Hermit 1] If you are so pitiful, and know it, why not listen more and talk
less. Being a "high school dropout" is no reason not to use whatever native
intelligence you have, and even less reason not to learn. Making a noise
about it is unuseful. To yourself or to others. If the length of the words
concerns you, there are dictionaries to look them up. Your vocabulary will
soon expand. If that is "too much trouble" then I have to ask why you are
here.
[David Hill 1] I answer, "Yes, of course He can, He is all powerful."
[Hermit 1] How do you know this? How did you test it? This is another of
your unsubstantiated (and unsubstantiable) assertions and those are the
primary reason you are unloved here.
[David Hill 1] But I can conceive of the idea of concepts of which I can't
conceive.
[Hermit 1] From the amount of noise you make, I would suggest that you have
no idea of how little you know - and one of the things you don't know is
that you cannot "conceive" that which you "cannot conceive". It is a
paradox. And in the real world, there is no such thing as a paradox. Only a
lack of comprehension or expression.
[David Hill 1] I cannot personally conceive of 6*9=42, but we haven't really
shown that the sum of angles in a plane triangle is pi empirically.
[Hermit 1] For 6*9 to be equal to 42, you would need to change some
definitions - and that would make your definitions less than useful to
others (so what is new?). As far as the "sum of angles in a plane triangle"
being 180 degrees, this is a definitional aspect of a triangle. The fact
that 2PI radians is equal to 360 degrees is also definitional. Thus simple
arithmetic shows that PI radians is equal to the "sum of the angles in a
plane triangle" and can be proved to whatever empirical degree you desire.
[David Hill 1] If I flipped a fair coin 50 times and came up with 50 heads,
you'd probably conclude that the 51st toss would also be a head.
[Hermit 1] Statistics tell us that the 51st toss of the fair coin is an
independent event with a probability of 50:50. Our knowledge of probability
tells us that a sequence of 51 heads in a row is highly unlikely (Simple
binomial distribution, i.e. P(k out of n)=((n!)/(k!(n-k)!))(p^k)(q^(n-k)
tells us that the probability is 4.4E-16), though not impossible, and that
given this very low probability (distribution theory tells us that you could
continually toss a coin once a second for 72 million years before expecting
to see this result) the alleged fairness of the coin should be queried. So
you are dealing with two classes of probability, that of a single
independent event and that of a sequence. So your assertion is incorrect
(need I say as usual?). No conflict, no paradox and no banana.
[David Hill 1] My dictionary does not have strong and weak athiesm, only a
one liner "Athiest- one who believes that there is no God." I interpret
that as a rock hard and steadfast conclusion that "there is no God."
[Hermit 1] Get a better dictionary. One not written by people wanting to
promote their beliefs, and one written by people who know how to spell. A
dictionary which misrepresents words is not a useful dictionary, a
dictionary that cannot even spell "atheist" does not inspire me with
confidence in the reliability of their definitions. Perhaps this partially
explains why you are having trouble with words [Dave Hill 1.1 above].
[David Hill 1] I believe I know nothing, but act as if I do.
[Hermit 1] Your beliefs are showing. And like most beliefs (acceptance in
the absence of [i]sufficient[/i] evidence), they are wrong. You don't know
"nothing" even if you act as if you do. But on your behavior here, I would
suggest that you know very little. Good manners suggest that you "shut your
noise."
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