Keep your Theist/Atheist arguments here

[Old Koreelah]

14 hours ago, onetrack said:One Professor Ivan Watkins of the University of Texas, Austin, postulates that the Incas utilised the focussed rays of the Sun to cut their building stones so precisely...

I don’t doubt the possibility, 1T.
Yonks ago I “inherited” a broken WWII searchlight mirror from a mate. One afternoon I opened the garage door and was badly burned as I walked past the broken remains. After pointing a section (less than half a square meter) at the late afternoon sun it took seconds to melt a fingernail-sized hole thru some steel.

 

[old man emu]

Any parabolic mirror will reflect light parallel rays that strike its inner surface through the focal point of the parabola. 

 

You can use the following equation to determine the focal point for yourself. The formula for a parabola is f = x2 /4a.

To find the focal point of a parabola, follow these steps:

Step 1: Measure the longest diameter (width) of the parabola at its rim.

Step 2: Divide the diameter by two to determine the radius (x) and square the result (x2 ).

Step 3: Measure the depth of the parabola (a) at its vertex and multiply it by 4 (4a).

Step 4: Divide the answer from Step 2 by the answer to Step 3 (x2 /4a). The answer is the distance from the vertex of the parabola to its focal point.

If the rays are in the infra-red portion of the spectrum they are related to heating. So those heating rays are concentrated in one spot and can start a fire.

 

 A mirrored surface with high specular reflection is used to concentrate light from the sun into a small cooking area. Depending on the geometry of the surface, sunlight could be concentrated by several orders of magnitude producing temperatures high enough to melt salt and metal. For most household solar cooking applications, such high temperatures are not really required. Solar cooking products are typically designed to achieve temperatures of 65 °C (150 °F) (baking temperatures) to 400 °C (750 °F) (grilling/searing temperatures) on a sunny day.

 

Paraboloids are compound curves, which are more difficult to make with simple equipment than single curves. Although paraboloidal solar cookers can cook as well as or better than a conventional stove, they are difficult to construct by hand. Frequently, these reflectors are made using many small segments that are all single curves which together approximate compound curves.

 

 

[Bruce Tuncks]

Why would the extra-terrestrials spent their time and expertise on such stupid structures? Hiding your treasure in a pyramid visible for a hundred k?

Anyway, there is no shortage of evidence to the lack of such help. Each layer of the pyramids is sloping just a bit towards the prevailing wind and why? because they flooded each layer after sealing up the joints with clay and making a low perimeter wall. Stains of the clay are there to this day.

Why do we not usually hear such stuff? For the same reason we don't hear evidence of the non-existence of jesus.

There is not much money is these stories.

[Old Koreelah]

On 02/03/2021 at 10:34 PM, old man emu said:

Examinations at Pumapunku site of the soil under the structure indicate that construction commenced about AD 536 .  A radiocarbon date was obtained from organic material from the lowermost and oldest layer of mound-fill forming the Pumapunku...

Back to this, one of the most important topics.

 

Is the above report totally reliable and definitive?

If so, other researchers should be able to replicate the work and get the same result.

 

This bloke, and lots like him, don’t accept the conventional explanations.

 

This video is a good summary of current mysteries and well worth watching.

 

 

 

This 

[nomadpete]

I'm enjoying all this collective researching and postulating. Thanks!

 

Although most most posts are not directly related to "...your theist/atheist arguments...",   It represents the least thread drifting that I've ever seen!

 

I guess it does highlight our human tendency to create stories whenever we get challenged by an unanswerable question. That leaves the rest of us to try to find logical answers to mysteries.

 

Eg: The great wall of china, "built by emperor Nasi Goreng to keep the rabbits out", or telling kids where babies come from, or numerous religious texts.

[Old Koreelah]

 

I’ve long suspected that intellectual laziness is behind much religious faith.

[Jerry_Atrick]

Stephen Fry said somethng like, when you start believeing in religion, you have become too lazy to think.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Technical amazing feats of the ancients? Not in my book. They did have lots of time but not much expertise I reckon. In particular, the use of the building...  was it even sensible? The pyramids don't pass that test.

What we do not lack these days is a supply of gullible people. Here's an amazing thing...  In the middle ages, a "proof" was acceptable if you could show that some important person believed it.

How stupid, thought I, but then I thought of the use of celebrities in advertising and realized that we haven't changed.

[Old Koreelah]

4 hours ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

Technical amazing feats of the ancients? Not in my book. They did have lots of time but not much expertise I reckon...

Bruce have you watched the videos I posted above? 

Highly-qualified modern engineers are impressed by the precision of ancient stone machining (and say they doubt it could be done today).

[Bruce Tuncks]

Yep old K I have seen the video. Sorry, but I reckon he was selling a point of view and not being even-handed. For example, he didn't mention anything about the clay stains I referred to .

And the idea of the great pyramid being some sort of amplifier? This would need a LOT of maths to support. Personally, I don't believe it.

The wonderful stonework before the Aztecs sure shows that they had a different perspective on time to what we have today, but I don't agree that it shows more than that.

Anyway, thanks for posting the video.

[old man emu]

This is an interesting talk about an aspect of referencing the Bible. It's content is not evangelical, but more along the line of the efforts to use the Bible in a secular setting. 

 

 

[nomadpete]

[nomadpete]

[facthunter]

What sort of a $#1t for brains clown would want 72 Virgins? Most religions do  a dreadful job with sexual matters.. God has no Mrs God and It's ALL knowing so decides the BEST  WAY and gave us one with Apples and temptresses where we committed a great sin and wrecked everything. (So the story goes). Men have the same number of ribs as women  Nev

[nomadpete]

[facthunter]

Religion relies in things you can't see or prove.. IF I believed everything  I'd wish to believe I'd have made some extra crook decisions along the way. God gave me eyes to see ears to hear and nerves to feel and sense things. Also a brain to think with. WE can be traced back to common genes with very simple creatures and we've had millions of years of continuous evolution to make us what we are.. Creatures of THIS earth and suited to it uniquely. 

  That last sentence is MY religion.. Respect for LIFE forms not eternal life. Nev

[Old Koreelah]

6 hours ago, facthunter said:

God gave me eyes to see ears to hear and nerves to feel and sense things. Also a brain to think with…

Nev for saying that in the western world not so long ago, you’d have suffered a terrible fate.

There are still lots of countries where that would still happen.

 

[nomadpete]

[willedoo]

Today, bearded men in funny hats oversee more than two million Russians jumping in freezing cold water.

[onetrack]

That's just gotta be a pack of Russian Orthodox iceholes.

 

https://www.expresstorussia.com/experience-russia/the-russian-orthodox-epiphany.html

[Bruce Tuncks]

How can anybody take the words of bronze-age goatherders seriously? Those scribes knew zero about anything from astronomy through to zoology. ( yes, chemistry and biology and physics are all in there).

There must be rewards of power and money for some there who can fool the gullible. I bet they don't really believe their own stuff for an instant.

[Old Koreelah]

37 minutes ago, Bruce Tuncks said:

… I bet they don't really believe their own stuff for an instant.

An anonymous survey of Anglican clergy revealed an amazingly high number should actually be classified as agnostics. Lots of them didn’t believe in many of basic tenets of Christian theology.

 

I suspect a similar survey among other creeds would show the same results; no wonder some religions are so militant about anyone showing the slightest skepticism about their beliefs.

 

 

[Marty_d]

I was having a think about this the other day.  Wondering why "religion" got its own category, and pretty much a free pass to be considered normal human behaviour, as opposed to someone believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden, or mermaids, or voices in their heads, or unicorns, or benevolent conservatives - things that are generally agreed to not exist.

 

Is it just because of the large number of people that share the... I don't want to say "delusion", but can't find another word - that puts the bible/torah/koran on the "non-fiction" shelf?  If a billion people truly believed in fairies, would books about fairies also switch from fiction to non?

 

After all, it's all just stuff that cannot be proven.  This concept of "faith" is brandished about by believers as if it's a good thing, but to me it's a cop-out - the preference for believing in things that can't be proven, sometimes at the expense of things that can.

[nomadpete]

My theory...

Humans seem to have an inbuilt weakness for stortelling. Combined with an instinct for following the alpha male in the pack. And since humans are known to be fallible, it was necessary to invent a supernatural leader that cannot be challenged.

If you don't like my theory, that's ok. I promise my ego is not so attached to it that I'd start a war over it.

[Old Koreelah]

6 minutes ago, Marty_d said:

…This concept of "faith" is brandished about by believers as if it's a good thing, but to me it's a cop-out - the preference for believing in things that can't be proven, sometimes at the expense of things that can.

Quite a few of the best people (including my wife) I know are churchgoers or religious. Although I don’t share their faith, I respect that it brings them some comfort and peace of mind.

 

However, that tolerance evaporates as soon as they start on me!