Split Thread Atheism and lack of belief in the afterlife

[Chanakya]

"Explain every variable in the universe to me right now or admit there could be a God."

God of the gaps doesn't gap anymore than that.

Bingo!

 

[Leumas]

Using "clock" in the wider sense of a means to measure time, then all radioactive decay dating systems are clocks. They make use of the well known phenomenon that, although individual radioactive decay events are entirely random, statistically a sufficiently large selection of them follow a law precisely. That is, indeed, an inescapable conclusion of the fact that there is such a concept as "half-life".

...
Ninja'd by Dave.
Great minds think alike.

...
The decay of any individual atom is, to the best of our knowledge, entirely random, but the half-life of a larger sample is deterministic enough to be used as a very precise clock.

Goodness gracious!!!

Have you guys heard of the Piezoelectric Effect?? Look it up.

Atomic (Cesium) clocks work on the that... Cesium is used instead of say Quartz because its frequency is very high and thus affords a much more accurate timing.

NOTHING to do with half-life or atomic fission... the Cesium used in atomic clocks is not even radioactive.

I don't know of any clocks, as in time-pieces, but radioactive decay is extensively used for dating in geology, paleontology, and even occasionally in forensic dating. That sort of clock....

You said VERY PRECISE CLOCK.

Carbon dating and other radioactive half-life dating systems measure time in YEARS... DECADES and CENTURIES accuracy which is suitable for geological and archaeological timing with an accuracy of +/- Decades or Centuries.

The reason for this +/- Large amount of time is precisely because of the RANDOMNESS of the atomic decay process and thus PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTION is used to STATISTICALLY have an average for the LARGE SPREAD IN DIFFERENCES in the time of individual atoms' decay.

 

[Leumas]

Clock / Dating are different things though.

We determine how old things are with radioactive decay, we don't (to the best of my knowledge) don't tell the tame based on the type of radioactive decay being discussed.

Atomic clocks don't even use radioactive material and work on the piezoelectric effect which has nothing to do with radioactive fission or half life.

And dating using half-life of say ¹⁴C and other such material has accuracies in the Decades or Centuries range precisely because of the RANDOMNESS of the process.

 

[JoeMorgue]

And again none of this makes any gaps to shove a God (or a maybe God, or a you can't prove there isn't a God) into.

 

[Leumas]

ftfy.

Have you ever heard of the research by Dunning and Kruger? It explains why sometimes people perceive things as "crap" when they are not.

You THINK you fixed it when in fact you have not... because you do not know enough about the topics of science involved... but you THINK you do.

 

[Leumas]

And again none of this makes any gaps to shove a God (or a maybe God, or a you can't prove there isn't a God) into.

Come on... my Intelligently Designed Dragon (ID²) is the one who causes the oscillations of cesium using his unicorn to nudge it along at the precise frequency to make it useful for use in GPSs and atomic clocks.

And he is the one also responsible for making atoms fissure RANDOMLY so as to befuddle accurate precise dating of biblical archaeology stuff and thus keeping the FAITH despite all the evidence (e.g. Shroud of Turin and YAC etc.)

 

[acbytesla]

Have you ever heard of the research by Dunning and Kruger? It explains why sometimes people perceive things as "crap" when they are not.

You THINK you fixed it when in fact you have not... because you do not know enough about the topics of science involved... but you THINK you do.

You just proved that I am an example of the Dunning Kruger effect. I was under the impression that the Atomic Clock used the radioactivity of Caesium 137.

 

[Leumas]

Only in the sense that measuring a millimetre is different to measuring a thousand miles. The scale and the techniques used are different, but the same dimension is being measured.

Measuring distance with the distance hopped by a mob of Kangaroos' average hopping distance bell curve is not the same as measuring distance by laser beams.

Also Kangaroos hopping and laser beams work on different physics principles.

 

[Leumas]

You just proved that I am an example of the Dunning Kruger effect. I was under the impression that the Atomic Clock used the radioactivity of Caesium 137.

No... you are not... you just did not know and have learned now...



Some people double and triple and quadruple and insist and persist in their ignorance never willing to admit their error... these are the real examples of it.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Only slightly.

We measure time by the number or seconds in a minute and the number of minutes in an hour and so on.

So we start by defining what a second is. And we define a second by the numerical value of the caesium frequency, ΔνCs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9192631770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1.[1]
The United States official time is kept by the NIST-F1 Cesium Fountain Atomic Clock in Boulder, Colorado. It isn’t based on radioactive decay, but it does use the radioactivity of the caesium atom to keep time.

We use radioactive decay to date the age of materials. How is this not like an atomic stopwatch?

Well, the point was that while decay of individual atoms appear completely random, the resultant decay rate is deterministic enough so we can use it to measure time.

Hans

 

[MRC_Hans]

Goodness gracious!!!

Have you guys heard of the Piezoelectric Effect?? Look it up.

Atomic (Cesium) clocks work on the that... Cesium is used instead of say Quartz because its frequency is very high and thus affords a much more accurate timing.

NOTHING to do with half-life or atomic fission... the Cesium used in atomic clocks is not even radioactive.


You said VERY PRECISE CLOCK.

Did you get my point about a random process leading to a deterministic function? I think you did. Fine, call it a clock or whatever you will, I don't give a damn.

Carbon dating and other radioactive half-life dating systems measure time in YEARS... DECADES and CENTURIES accuracy which is suitable for geological and archaeological timing with an accuracy of +/- Decades or Centuries.

The reason for this +/- Large amount of time is precisely because of the RANDOMNESS of the atomic decay process and thus PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTION is used to STATISTICALLY have an average for the LARGE SPREAD IN DIFFERENCES in the time of individual atoms' decay.

No, that is not correct. The half-life of a given isotope is quite precise. The fact that some dating processes, notoriously C₁₄, are not very accurate, is due to other factors. For instance we can only infer the original content of the isotope within a certain margin.

But let us not go down yet another derail.

Hans

 

[JoeMorgue]

None of this means there's a god.

 

[MRC_Hans]

None of this means there's a god.

This thread has come so far from the original track that your post almost looks like a derail. But correct. All in all, anything discussed here for the last numerous pages have naught to do with the putative existence of a god.

Hans

 

[Leumas]

The decay of any individual atom is, to the best of our knowledge, entirely random, but the half-life of a larger sample is deterministic enough to be used as a very precise clock.

Well, the point was that while decay of individual atoms appear completely random, the resultant decay rate is deterministic enough so we can use it to measure time.

No that is not deterministic enough to measure time so as to make "very precise clocks"... which is what you said.

[imgw=300]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/thum_5128254c7ad419f7f4.jpg[/imgw]​

And measuring time with an accuracy of +/- decades or centuries even is not deterministic enough because it is +/- decades which is NOT ******* deterministic.

Saying that Queen of hearts being drawn from a deck of cards is 1/52 and so that is deterministic enough is an irrational claim to the extreme.

Measuring distance by the average length of a kangaroo's hop is not deterministic by any warping of the laws of rationality.

 

[Darat]

This thread has come so far from the original track that your post almost looks like a derail. But correct. All in all, anything discussed here for the last numerous pages have naught to do with the putative existence of a god.

Hans

Well the thread really ended when psionl0 conceded their point about an afterlife and atheism was incorrect.

Since then it's really been one of the "chewing the fat" style of thread we've all loved over the decades.

 

[Leumas]

Did you get my point about a random process leading to a deterministic function?

Yes... and you are arrantly wrong by all the laws of physics and logic.

No, that is not correct. The half-life of a given isotope is quite precise.

No it is not... you are arrantly wrong... go look it up.


Accuracy of Half-life

As can be seen from Figure 1a, for the majority of the plotted isotopes (94 out of 120) the half-life is known with less than 5% uncertainty.

Do you know what 1% UNCERTAINTY means? Yes it means it is not ******* deterministic.

 

[JoeMorgue]

This thread has come so far from the original track that your post almost looks like a derail. But correct. All in all, anything discussed here for the last numerous pages have naught to do with the putative existence of a god.

Hans

I know. God apologist just tend to latch on to any disagreement among non believers of proof of... something. I'm just cutting the legs out from under that before it tries to stand up.

 

[Leumas]

This thread has come so far from the original track that your post almost looks like a derail. But correct. All in all, anything discussed here for the last numerous pages have naught to do with the putative existence of a god.

Insisting on the contrary to science determinism of the universe is all about the determiner and for many who deny randomness whatsoever they are doing that because they think that their god does not play dice.

 

[acbytesla]

Well, the point was that while decay of individual atoms appear completely random, the resultant decay rate is deterministic enough so we can use it to measure time.

Hans

Yes.

 

[Leumas]

None of this means there's a god.

Insisting that everything is deterministic DESPITE all the scientific evidence is just the same as insisting that there could be a god who is just hiding somewhere.

And if they admit an indeterministic reality they would have to admit that their hidden god might have just vanished in a puff of uncertainty instead of just hiding.

So in their minds denying randomness and tenaciously clenching onto determinism is all about god the determiner.