Is this a bible thumper's site or a science site?

Why is the religion forum the only one in which this method of archiving is used?

 

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Now we know what to expect in heaven.

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Or at least what the prevailing expectation might be.

 

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Stryder is spot-on. Keeping forums and sub-forums tidy denotes an active and engaged staff. I have been an Admin and Super-Moderator at a very large forum. Spam threads/posts were usually soft-deleted. Viable threads with no input after six months were sent to an Archives forum (read only - no posting allowed). We also had a hidden archive for problematic (such as potential legal problems) threads/posts. No one could see this hidden archive except the staff and it was inaccessible to search-engine bots and our own internal search-engine (Sphinx).

 

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I've been thinking the same thing as Motor Daddy, that there is a lot of anti-religion on here, and most of those threads are repeating the same thing as each other. Although I'm an Atheist, I'm not too bothered to repeatedly attack religion. And also Motor Daddy's posts are interesting. You have to think carefully about his topics. This deep level of thinking can create answers that are hidden below the surface. Light in a moving box.. it's got physics that you don't always think about.

 

In reply to the OP I’ve found that the Science Forums here tend to extremely set in their established theories (hide bound and reactionary). Now I admit there are many crackpot posts that probably deserve to be dumped into the Cesspool and Pseudo Science Forums.

However, I have actually had a legitimate question regarding the curvature of space-time based an essay I read by Doctors Taylor and Wheeler in their book Space-Time Physics moved to Pseudo Science.

Why? Because it was titled The Conscience-Guided Space Ship. Now this title might sound a bit new age but it was the actual title given to this essay by the authors.
(I guess they were hippies from the 60s, but still hard scientists)

This was dumped into the Pseudoscience forum twice! You get some interesting replies in Pseudoscience but not really the ones you want if it is a hard science question.

Could it be that the moderator didn’t even read the post? For shame!

The last straw that discouraged me from most of the Science Forums except maybe Earth Science and Astronomy on this site was when someone posted that the LHC in Cern had apparently detected neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light. This post was unceremoniously dumped into the Pseudoscience.

Frankly that disgusted me, it implies that the minds of some so called scientists is as closed as the Inquisition.

IMO the Science Forums here need to stop behaving like the Catholic Church in the middle ages. Sorry dudes but everything does not revolve around the Earth, and Einstein has been known to be wrong about a few things if not a lot.

Sure Cess the obvious trolls and crackpots, but stop behaving like old women guarding their recipes all the time. And for god sake if you sign up to be a moderator read the damn posts before you do anything else.

 

Yeah I was banned for using the Kissing Problem in the maths forum because it had a strange name...

http://plus.maths.org/content/newton-and-kissing-problem

Whilst I was banned I had to solve my idea on my own... (As you can see in my picture, the rebound angles of my particles are strange at the quantum scale, so might be a natural cause for Snowflakes etc)


http://www.sciforums.com/showpost.php?p=2889332&postcount=289

My banning...
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=111089&highlight=kissing+problem

Look at this reply from the Administrator...

 

As long as that's all he's using his hands for.

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And I also wrote a computer simulation of the Kissing Problem, and hey presto, it naturally created a snowflake... Press Space Bar

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/pinchopaxton/Gravity2.rar

But maths only counts if it is to do with relativity.

 

No, you were banned because you post nonsense and are deliberately dishonest. You misrepresent science, you pretend to have knowledge/abilities you do not have, you offer no informed discussion when it comes to science and thus your posts failed to contribute to the forum. The fact you're misrepresenting the reason you were suspended is yet another demonstration you live in your own little world. The name had nothing to do with it, there's plenty of oddly named things in science. The fact you don't know any maths or physics and yet delude yourself into thinking otherwise is why your posts in the main maths/physics forums don't contribute anything but noise.

Speaking as a moderator of the forum in question I think you have it backwards. The scientific method of experiments and model development began with Galileo. As such he was the first to really understand the need to present evidence, while the Church just asserted things with zero evidence (and still does). 400+ years later we have centuries of scientific development under our belts and thus something is only going to rise to the top of scientific models if it has considerable experimental justification. Thus when someone like MotorDaddy or Pincho or any other hack with a pet notion comes along and posts "I've explained [something]!" in the main forum they are asked "Can you justify that?". For example, Farsight claims to have done Nobel Prize winning work but when I ask him to provide a single working model of any physical phenomenon of his choice he can't. Likewise with the other hacks. Hence things get kicked to the pseudo section in short order quite often.

When someone claims something counter to the prevailing evidence and understanding of science then they are required to meet a pretty high standard of justification. If we didn't hold them to such a standard we'd just be swallowing assertions blindly, which is exactly what the Church wanted Galileo to do. Hence why you have it backwards. Hacks always say "Think for yourself!" but then demand "Accept my assertions, despite them having no evidence or reason or structure!". Sorry, no dice. When you can provide reason and evidence then you'll be listened to and not dumped into the pseudo section.

None of the people moderating the maths/physics forum think today's understandings/models will remain intact forever but we're only going to be persuaded to say "This new idea is sufficiently superior to the present one that it supplants it and will be used from now on!" by plenty of reason and evidence. Pincho, MD, Farsight, Sylwester, wlminex, qwc, none of them meet that standard.

 

I totally agree with what you said AlphaNumeric, but it's a bit galling to have a post dumped out of a forum because its got a racy title. And that obviously had not been read by the moderator. I know you were not the moderator in question at the time. So I'm not blaming you.

I don't claim any scientific qualifications outside of Architecture, Engineering, Industrial Design and Art, except maybe being an over enthusiastic bibliophile and a frustrated amateur writer.

But one reason people join this forum is to converse with specialists in all sciences, and feel affronted when they run into nerdy preciousness when the discussion starts to contradict the geek's pet theories.

I.e that post (which happened to be absolutely true) about the LHC and faster than light neutrino's. I might end up being a mistake but if its not?
Should this forum close its mind to the possibility that the universe is a lot stranger and more complex than anyone first imagined?

 

Ahaha. Exactly what I thought when I came back here after a long absence. I was astonished at the preponderance of wacky stuff and religious stuff.

Come to physicsforums.com

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It was worse??

 

Dave, they pretty much don't care how wacky it is.

 

I know. For my "scientific" science fix I go to physicsforums. Then again, they run a pretty tight ship.

Here, it's more like the Wild West. Perhaps my calling is to leave the organization of a tight ship and come here, like a missionary, to do some good work. (How's that? Three metaphors in one sentence.)

 

I've not seen it worse than now.
I've thought just recently whether it was worth coming here to read such nonsense all the time.

An attempt was made to keep them to a specific section of the site,
but like that very pretty rhododendron hybrid that spreads over thousands of acres,
they are an invasive species, and are not content to live in their allocated garden.
They want all the light, and kill everything else.

Re the Bible Thumping.
I don't think that the problem is with religious views.
There is a religion discussion area, where religious discussion is mainly done.
That's not a problem, I think.
I'm a person with religious faith myself, although I don't venture much into that section.

Occasionally, a foolhardy soul will present Creationist Science as a real science, but they don't last.
It doesn't last long when facts are presented.

In fact, we have a vacancy for the position of resident Creation Scientist, if anyone is willing to have a go.

 

I dunno, I tried to do a serious thread about mind-control/brainwashing...I had to ask someone to start his own thread as he immediately dragged a bunch of Alex Jones/World Nut Daily nonsense into it and would not stop diverting the topic...his references...ohboy, why do people believe everything they read on the Internet?
*headesk*

I mean, one of his refs wrote the article under a pseudonym and his bulls*** detector did not cut on...

...Social sci geeks caint get no love 'round heah.:bawl:

 

It does seem that quite a few threads up in the specifically-science forums have religious, and even more often political, purposes.

If Sciforums really wants to insulate the technical message from all the extraneous noise, then the board's management probably needs to move the less-technical 'science and society' fora down into the philosophy or politics hierarchies. 'Social science' is kind of an oxymoron as well and oftentimes has little resemblance to the hard-sciences. And the 'comparative religion' forum was probably well intentioned, but it isn't working out.

Having rearranged things, the moderators would need to adopt a more aggressive policy of moving threads out of the tech-fora if they start to be about politics or religion.

They would need to be pretty hard-line on crank-science too, since Sciforums currently overflows with it, though as some people have noted that's often a judgement call.

I don't think that there's a great deal of Bible-thumping here on Sciforums. The dumb religious posts on this board are more typically atheists strutting around like little roosters.

That's where I generally hang out because that's where my academic background is. Religious discussions are very interesting to me, not only because I'm interested in religious-studies, but also because religion discussions often exemplify broader philosophical issues that are fascinating in their own right.

You know, if I was in charge around here, I'd think about moving the 'comparative religion' forum out of the science hierarchy and merging it with the regular 'religion' forum. (There's no discernable difference in the threads on the two fora.)

Then I'd replace the 'comparative religion' forum up in the science hierarchy with a 'philosophy of science' forum. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that there are enough participants on the board who know anything about the philosophies of physics, biology or mathematics, about the epistemology of experiment, induction, teleology, functionalism, realism/instrumentalism, the nature of probability and so on, to make it work.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to BE any creation science. Creation science doesn't appear to actually exist.

I've never seen creation 'scientists' propose any clear and explicit theories of their own as alternatives to the biological evolution and geological chronology that they continually snipe at. They never conduct any scientific research using their alternative creationist paradigm. They never produce any testable predictions or explain real events in a comprehensible way. I've never seen any creationist engineering applications.

It would be entertaining to argue with somebody like that. But it would be a dangerous job. A proponent of creation science would have to come equipped with a top-of-the-line flame-resistant suit.

 

Many od the discusions/debates at Sciforums are possible precisely because there are not many participants on the board who know something about the philosophies of physics, biology or mathematics, about the epistemology of experiment, induction, teleology, functionalism, realism/instrumentalism, the nature of probability and so on. If more people would be more well-versed in these matters, there'd be a lot less to talk about, and a lot less conflict.

 

I agree with all of what what you've said, but particularly this.
The continual crank science is becoming a pain in the arse.

 

At Physicsforum, no crank allowed. And they're pretty good at moderating it.

 

That's fair enough but where do you draw the line where moderation is needed? Their are some physicists who don't subscribe to String Theory.
Which although at this moment in time seems the most plausible still remains just a theory. Should these sort things get Cessed or dumped in Pseudo-science?

There was a closing of ranks when the notion that a certain universal constant was questioned. Which demonstrates that a lot of people are over protective of certain theories that they've based years or work on. Problem is it might be wrong and their life's work is pointless.
It's all good saying the modern science adapts when experiments prove otherwise, but individuals don't.


IMO until something is set in concrete as fact like Evolution and the Laws of Thermodynamics , these Science Forums should have some latitude with theory's as long a they don't fall over the loony line.