Are the laws of physics based on magic?

Light and other forms of energy. The typical dichotomy used to analyze the universe is: matter vs. energy. Of course Einstein muddled that when he discovered that matter can be changed into energy, but the dichotomy is still in standard use. The Four Fundamental Forces: Gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force are not material.

The new paradigm of elementary particles--quarks, leptons and bosons (one level deeper than the paradigm I learned in high school 55 years ago)--spells this out in more detail. By going to a lower level it has dispensed with the matter/energy dichotomy. But outside the academy's Cosmology Wing, the rest of us still use the convenient dichotomy of matter versus energy.

So light, indeed, is not material.

You keep forgetting the "YET." How many scientists have you met who just throw up their hands and say, "We'll never understand the Big Bang so I guess we'll all have to start going to church"?

I repeat: We've only known about the Big Bang for approximately one century. That's not enough time to completely understand it. And once again, I have to repeat these things to you because you appear to be completely unable to comprehend them, which makes your participation on a science board pointless for you and a big pain in the ass for everyone else who is thinking twenty times faster than you are.

I feel like I've got a precocious seven-year-old here. You can pronounce the words and you have a basic understand of the meanings of a few of them, but you can't understand the sentences in which they're used.

Which brings me back to my oft-repeated observation: Religious people are stuck in the mind-set of a seven-year old. Believing in God in adulthood is not qualitatively different from believing in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.

Again, you omit the word YET. Many of these laws (e.g. relativity) and constants (e.g. the speed of light) have only been known for approximately one century. You need to be more patient as we now struggle to figure out why they are what they are.

Again, this impatience belies the mindset of a seven-year-old. "I don't want to have to go to school for eleven more years before I can vote. I want to do it right now!"

How the hell can you know this, considering that we've barely begun the investigation into their origin? Again: no patience, no maturity, no ability to comprehend science.

One of many wonderful lines of dialog that Gene Roddenberry (and his staff) wrote for the Star Trek franchise was:

The basic statement of science, indeed the foundation of science, is "I don't know." [Spoken by Data in TNG if I'm not mistaken, and surely not quoted accurately.]​

Once again the seven-year-old comes back to haunt us. I've explained that at least three times and this makes four. The total of matter and antimatter in the universe is zero. In other words: nothing material exists now. All that exists is order and the Second Law of Thermodynamics permits local increases in order.

If you don't want us to think of you as a hopeless child, then please STOP ACTING LIKE ONE! Why do you need everything to be repeated four times? If you disagree with the explanation, well that's okay, but then it's up to you to state your disagreement. You don't get to come back three times and speak as though the explanation was never posted. That is trolling and it's a violation of the rules of the website. And it makes you look like a complete fool. I don't understand why you enjoy that.

I'm holding onto the hope that this discussion is very instructive to the young people who log on just to see how science works. If we can deal with Mazulu, then we can handle anything.

But everything the Prophet conveyed was (according to doctrine) revealed to him by God. If there is no God then Mohammed is just one more wacko. Who's going to become a martyr for the sake of a wacko who cannot in fact promise them eternal life starting out with 72 virgins?

Of course. This is simply politics and manipulation, and imaginary theology is a great way to found a political system. But it's not one that the founders would die for, since they're in on the scam.

But your premise is that even the followers are in on the scam. You still haven't explained why they would be willing to die for it.

Lots of people were willing to die for Hitler who didn't really agree with him, because he had the power to kill their entire family if they didn't obey. But imaginary gods don't have that power. So why would anyone be willing to die for an imaginary god?

 

But the angels are minions of God. Anyone who believes that Gabriel is real almost surely feels the same way about God.

Sure, nobody thought Mohammed was a wacko. But you say that virtually no one believed then or believes now that the God he spoke of so earnestly was/is real.

Therefore, are you saying that people were willing to die for Islam because it promised to reform their economic system? I can accept this, considering the number of Americans who are willing to die to impose our way of life on other countries. (Actual bumper sticker: "Don't piss off America or we'll bring freedom and democracy to your country next!")

But what does that say about the rerun of the Crusades? Are the members of the Taliban and Al Qaeda willing to die simply to hang onto their medieval tribal system of government, with no rights for women, etc? I suppose in a snarky mood I'd be happy to see them die for that cause, leaving behind the people who disagree with them and making the world incrementally better for everyone. But I'm not happy to see thousands of young Americans die so we can decide how people in another country should live. Especially since so far that hasn't worked. Korea was the only war since WWII that actually yielded anything, and did all those people need to die just so we could have Hyundais?

There are an awful lot of men in the Middle East who are willing to die for whatever we agree is the goal of the people who are fighting on the other side of the New Crusades. Are you saying this is merely to be remembered? They don't actually have a cogent cause?

I can understand the Palestinians. The Jews are punishing them for the Holocaust because we never let them bomb Germany. They genuinely hope that their sacrifices will result in a better life for the loved ones they leave behind. But few conflicts are so clear.

Good reason not to be a follower then.

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I'm not a leader either, so I'll just obey the old slogan and get out of the way.

 

That may be grammatically correct. But to call quarks and leptons "material," just because the only word scientists could come up with for them was "particles," is a pretty weak argument.

As I've noted many times on this forum, scientists are absolutely crappy communicators, particularly when they attempt to communicate with laymen. There is no better example than their use of the word "theory" to mean a hypothesis that has been proven true beyond a reasonable doubt, such as evolution, relativity and plate tectonics, and then turning around and coining the term "string theory" for a conjecture that is nothing more than a few mathematical formulas and a whole lotta arm-waving.

Photons (one of the five known kinds of bosons) have zero mass. Doesn't this suggest that calling them "particles," which encourages us to think of them as "matter," is misleading?