User talk:Samiam

What is going on? World Blogs Clogs Elections The Bar (talk) (talk) (talk) (talk) (hic) Welcome to RationalWiki, Samiam! Check out our guide for newcomers and our community standards! Tell us how you found RationalWiki here! If you are interested in contributing: Read what our articles are intended to be Check out the to-do list See our help page and Wikipedia's formatting cheatsheet If writing a new article, consider writing up a draft And most importantly: Pull up a goat and have some fun!

If I knew the way/I would take you home. 01:26, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

You won't find any love for Christian fundies here.

You also might find a few people who don't see a difference between "Christian" and "fundamentalist," and a few people who will question your sanity because of your faith. Also, any tips on how to troubleshoot what might be a wonky wireless card on a Toshiba running Ubuntu 13.04? If I knew the way/I would take you home. 01:29, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

It’s unfortunate that Fundamentalists have tainted the Christian religion so in the minds of many. Militant Atheists who judge all people of faith harshly make the same error as fundamentalists who judge people without their particular religious faith. If that is the makeup of the community here, I will probably not remain an active member of this community.

The best way to confirm if there is a hardware problem is to dual-boot in to Windows and see if the same piece of hardware has a problem there. Samiam (talk) 02:08, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

We have a fair amount of militant atheists here, but a good mix of people with more refined approaches. I myself would have been counted among the former group at some point, but I had a bit of what I think of as a "spiritual awakening," to quote one of the greats, so I'm trying to engage in constructive dialogue with and asking questions of open-minded people with faith these days. No Windows to dual-boot with, unfortunately. If I knew the way/I would take you home. 02:13, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough. Militant Atheism is a step above fundamentalism; while it still has a lot of the same intolerances fundamentalism has, it is at least open-minded about science and doesn’t have the fascist disconnect from objective facts that fundamentalism has. Richard Carrier, who ended up being a pure Atheist in response to the religion he grew up with, as I recall, has said that liberal Christianity is just watered-down belief, and I can understand that point of view (see his biography at http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/testimonials/carrier.html where he touches on this idea). To me it is possible to have a positive Christian belief, or if you will, a spiritual awakening, without the nonsense of fundamentalism...and I hope my user page does not come off as a fundie trying to evangelize. Samiam (talk) 02:28, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

What I told Dr. Jason Lisle

Now that I have effectively refuted Dr. Lisle’s Anisotropic synchrony convention notion, here is a copy of the comment I posted at his blog:

Dr. Lisle,

It took me a few days to come up with an effective refutation to this “Anisotropic synchrony convention” (ASC) notion you have to attempt to make a young universe look like an old universe. It comes down to this: Your proposed young universe + ASC will be observationally different than an old universe (since you do not permit artificial light in transit in your universe).

Imagine, if you will, a large mirror in this young ASC universe of yours 5,000 light years from Earth. If one looks in this mirror from Earth in your young ASC universe, they will see nothing (well, OK, they will see whatever you consider “formless and void”) until 10,000 years after the universe’s special creation—4,000 years in the future should said universe be 6,000 years old.

On the other hand, if there is a star 10,000 light years from us and also 5,000 light years from the mirror (I have made the proposed mirror infinite and planar to make the math as simple as possible), this star will be visible from Earth about 2071 years after the creation of your ASC universe—roughly around the time of the Abrahamic covenant. Do the math. It’s a simple back of the envelope calculation.

Since your young ASC universe is observationally different than an old universe as accepted by conventional science, your hypothesis creates an observationally different universe and is therefore a testable one. I will continue to accept the conventional very old universe until a scientific observation which should show sunlight from the sun being reflected by the equivalent of a mirror in space 3,500 light years or more away instead shows whatever passes as “formless and void” (or, likewise, we meet intelligent aliens who marvel at how our particular star was shrouded in a contracting sphere of darkness until the Sun, from the point of view of the aliens, magically appeared 6,000 years ago).

Samiam (talk) 18:21, 4 July 2013 (UTC)