For the poster formerly known as Doberman

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Dec 9 2006, 12:17 AM) [snapback]359602[/snapback]</div>

YMMV is "Your mileage may vary"..in this context it means your opinion might be different. I apologize for the confusion.

Uh, the Apostles started Christianity because they folowed Christ...Christ...Chritianity...see the connection? If not for Christ, Christianity would not exist.

Are you saying NO ONE would have ever thought up the theories Einstein did?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Schmika @ Dec 10 2006, 06:09 PM) [snapback]360197[/snapback]</div>

Yep, and it was considered a religion or "cult" by the Romans by the time they executed Paul and Peter.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Stev0 @ Dec 10 2006, 02:24 PM) [snapback]360135[/snapback]</div>

It's easy and cheap to make fun of chimpanzees.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Dec 10 2006, 05:41 PM) [snapback]360179[/snapback]</div>

The Shah was a tyrant and a torturerer. I had an Iranian friend in high school (he insisted on calling himself Persian, not Iranian: two different names for the same place). He hated the Shah.

Continuing support for the Shah would only have prolonged the bloodshed. His overthrow was inevitable. Does America really think it can keep despots in power forever? Or is it just a matter of extracting as much resources as possible before the inevitable fall of its puppet dictator in any given country?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 11 2006, 10:09 AM) [snapback]360313[/snapback]</div>

Then you agree with taking out Saddam who probably was responsible for more deaths than the Shah of Iran. And what do you think of the consequences of getting rid of the Shah? I am sure you are also against letting Iran develop nuclear weapons having the despot who is currently in power spouting off how he is going to off countries, etc, etc and kill untold numbers of humans. So how would you go about removing him?

I also have a friend from Iran who loved the Shah and bemoans what has happened to what was once his beautiful country. So there :lol:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Dec 11 2006, 08:50 AM) [snapback]360365[/snapback]</div>

You make it extraordinarily difficult to refrain from calling you obscene names when you persist in slandering people by imputing to them opinions they have consistently denounced!

What I advocate is not dropping bombs on innocent people in the name of "taking out" vile dictators. What I advocate is that we refrain from creating, financing, supplying, and in every other way supporting those vile dictators in the first place! The U.S. does not need to "take out" anyone. It just needs to stop installing and supporting them.

The Shah was a creature of the U.S. (who installed his father), and Saddam was supported by the U.S. throughout the time of his worst atrocities.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Schmika @ Dec 10 2006, 06:09 PM) [snapback]360197[/snapback]</div>

I said: " ... Doubtless mankind would have eventually produced a mind capable of imagining relativity theory from nothing ..."

So, no, not only am I NOT saying no one else could have achieved the same feat of imagination, but that inevitable someone WOULD (and in our case, it was Einstein). The point isn't the who, it's the impact on history. Whether it was Einstein or someone else, it's one example in human history (among many) where the product of a single intellect had a profound effect on everything that came afterward. You had asserted that one person can't change history (and in the instance of Hitler, I tend to agree, he was simply one more deranged but charismatic personality who had the advantage of advanced technology to carry out genocide more efficiently than his predecessors), but in the case of Einstein, he was decidely singular - a man with no predecessors in his accomplishment, and his accomplishment transformed an entire body of science in less than a lifetime.

Thanks for the YMMV explanation - I kept coming up with "Your Mother Must Vacuum" and "Yodeling Mangles Music Vapidly" and "Yet More Meaningless Vapor" and I knew none of those could be right and it was driving me to distraction!

Meanwhile, back to how did Jesus change history - let's be generous and extend the question beyond the individual and enlarge it to the christian sect: how did the christian sect change history? From my perspective, it is simply one more religion indistinguishable from its predecessors, and indistinguishable from latter day religions (Mormonism, for example). In the year zero AD (hard to assess since Jesus' existence as an actual person is historically questionable) a new movement began called "christianity." How was it in any meaningful way any different from already established sects? How was history shifted by it?

Did it convey fresh insights into how people should behave toward each other? No.

Did people behave any differently? No.

Did it upset any established social order? No.

Did it convey new, significant knowledge about nature that led to agricultural, technological or social advancement? No.

Did it change the practice of medicine? No.

Did it change food preparation methods? No.

Did it change our perception of the universe; alter our outlook on what it all means? No.

Did it change the nature, depth, or intensity of personal religious experience? No.

Did it change whose portrait some people chose to pray to in church? Yes. I will grant that. It's ALL I can think of.

What have I missed?


Mark Baird
Alameda CA

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(airportkid @ Dec 11 2006, 08:26 PM) [snapback]360764[/snapback]</div>

Einstein was a most remarkable man, but he did not produce relativity "from nothing" and he most certainly built on the accomplishments of his predecessors. To simplify, he basically took Maxwell's equations for electricity and applied them to gravity. This was a profound insight and an amazing accomplishment, but it was also a discovery that was ripe to be made. It was also a small step beyond Newtonian physics, because basically what it did was add time as a factor to the classical theory of gravity. It was already known (from Maxwell) that electromagnitism propagates at finite speed, but it was thought that gravity propagates instantaneously. Einstein made Newton consistent with Maxwell.

The world of physics is populated with brilliant minds. Einstein was not an isolated mountain in a flat plain. He was a peak just slightly higher than the surrounding peaks, and all of them standing upon those that had come before them.

If Einstein had never been born, relativity would have been discovered by someone else, probably around the same time or very slightly later. He said himself that he rose so high only because he stood on the shoulders of giants. A brilliant man, but not by any means an anomaly.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 12 2006, 10:40 AM) [snapback]360878[/snapback]</div>

Since Einstein was only a "slightly higher than surrounding peak" please educate me and name those whose peaks are higher.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Dec 12 2006, 12:46 PM) [snapback]360880[/snapback]</div>

Hey, don't you get it?? He's marginalizing Einstein because he was JEWISH!!!!!!!!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Dec 12 2006, 10:49 AM) [snapback]360883[/snapback]</div>

Why are you asking me? I do not know enough about theoretical physics to make judgements as to who has profound effects on our knowledge base. My thoughts were Einstein is amongst the "highest peaks" ever. What has Hawkings done that could parallel or exceed what Einstein did.

I was just curious because of the way the author of that post put it.

Einstein did e+mc2 to name one thing. What did Hawkings do along that line?

It seems as though Einstein pulled together so many different pieces of known and from that radically expanded our knowledge base well beyond what would have been expected from one person at one moment in time. Stuff that he did still reverberates today!! What has Hawkings done that will last over 100 years?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Dec 12 2006, 10:46 AM) [snapback]360880[/snapback]</div>

I don't think Daniel was saying anything about anyone being a "higher peak" than Einstein. And I don't think he was trying to marginalize his accomplishments. Forgive me Daniel, but I've emphasized certain parts of your post to make my point.
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 12 2006, 10:40 AM) [snapback]360878[/snapback]</div>

He said Einstein was a peak higher than those around him. Einstein said he himself "stood on the shoulders of giants".

Since theoretical physics isn't my bag, I neither know nor care whether Stephen Hawking had done anything that will endure or reverberate. But if he has or will, he will have done it by standing on Einstein's shoulders. And whoever comes after Hawking will stand on Hawking's shoulders. Etc, etc.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Dec 12 2006, 07:46 AM) [snapback]360880[/snapback]</div>

And here we have a demonstration that Dr. Berman is unable to understand the English language. The first half of his sentence quotes my suggestion that Einstein was slightly higher then the others, and the second half of the sentence asks for names of those who were higher than Einstein.

Dr. Berman: If a given peak is slightly higher than all the others, then none of the others is higher than the first. How did you ever get through medical school?

As for what Stephen Hawking has accomplished, he suffers the misfortune that his achievements in physics require a significant level of physics and mathematics education to understand. A person capable of making Dr. Berman's statement quoted above is incapable of understanding anything Hawking has done in the field of theoretical physics. Einstein has certainly captured the public imagination more than any other psysicist,

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Dec 12 2006, 06:31 PM) [snapback]361167[/snapback]</div>

Yes. Einstein has become an icon, for smart, genius, etc and can certianly be said to have captured the public's imagination; probably more than any other scientist. At least I can't immediately recall seeing lots of t-shirts with Newton on them. Whereas I can say, for myself at least, I've learned more physics reading Hawking, Briane Greene, Leon Lederman, Richard Rhodes, and Carl Sagan than I did with the couple books by Einstein on my shelf. Not a math major though, so the equation stuff makes my head hurt.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 12 2006, 05:27 PM) [snapback]361164[/snapback]</div>

As Dr. Berman has shown time and time again is he has trouble understanding any reading more complex than "See Spot run." And even that gives him trouble.

"See Spot run? Cutting and running, huh? Spot, why do you enjoy being a Feminazi Islamofacist (sic)? I demand an answer."

And of course, when it's pointed out Spot A) isn't a "Feminazi Islamofascist", and B) a fictional character, The Good Doctor responds, "Don't have an answer? The defense rests."

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(eagle33199 @ Dec 11 2006, 06:41 AM) [snapback]360310[/snapback]</div>

Not sure about the Crusades, but the Inquisition is greatly over-rated. Only about 3000 people were tried and executed over a 350 year period. And it started 1400 years after Jesus lived. Still too many people, obviously, but hardly the holocaust that people think it was. For comparison's sake, the United States, since colonial times, has executed about 13,000 people in roughly the same number of years. That includes the 20 or so hung at the "Salem Witch Trials".

In my view, the real horror of the Inquisition is that the civil government gave so much power to the religious government (and its actually one of the reasons that our founders were so intent on dis-establishing any formal ties between government and church).

The witch burnings in Europe are a better example of the excesses of church power; I think there were 300,000 people executed in them. Still a far cry from the mechanized killing from atheists (Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot) in the 20th century, but hey, people object when I bring that up!

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 12 2006, 07:40 AM) [snapback]360878[/snapback]</div>

Excellent point. I know it is "excellent" because I agree with it!

A good book that covers the giants in cosmology and theoretical physics in the 20th century is "Big Bang" by Simon Singh. Singh shows how science REALLY works, rather than the sometimes simplified version we get of "testing, then peer review, and every one agrees and sings kum-by-ah".

In reality, men like Einstein were wrong in some areas, but stubbornly argued until they were proven wrong. Georges Lemaitre, the French physicist, took Einstein's general theory of relativity and showed how the universe -- which is expanding today -- must have been smaller in the past and started in a "singular moment". Einstein at first ridiculed Lemaitre's theory, and called him an idiot or a moron. This may have been because Lemaitre, in addition to being a physicist, was also a Catholic priest, and some thought his theory was too conveniently consistent with his religious philosophy. So the steady state theory prevailed until Hubble discovered that the universe was indeed expanding, and Lemaitre (and some others) were right: at a conference in Pasadena in the early 1930's, Einstein abandoned his "cosmological constant" and agreed with Lemaitre and the other big bang proponents that the universe must have started out very small.

Still, it took decades for the theory to become accepted fully, and even in Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" series, Sagan claims that the universe always existed, always was, and will always be, a hold-over sentiment from the steady state universe model.