Paradoxes

[LORD_RED_DRAGON]

i wondered why on american currency it says In God We Trust but our government has Capital Punishment but God says Thou Shalt not Kill.We oughta take God off of our Dollars because it is a lie.

exactly what i was thinking when i first saw the "who can seriously believe in the bible" thread

 

[The Winnipeg Warrior]

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

~Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

[LORD_RED_DRAGON]

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

~Franklin D. Roosevelt

that one was really good

 

[Saparmurat_Niyazov]

Hitler had a jewish lineage. That's probably more of an oxymoron.

 

[spaffe]

Hitler had a jewish lineage. That's probably more of an oxymoron.

That's just one of the many myths surrounding that man, like the one that claims he had only one testicle or was a homosexual.

 

[derek]

Interesting, nonetheless:

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_128b.html

The straight dope, regardless of a dumb name, always has some interesting stuff there.

 

[Norsemaiden]

A man says that he is lying. Is what he says true or false?
-- Eubulides of Miletus

It could be either true or false equally. But, if a man says that he ALWAYS lies, however, then that is false - because some of the time he is telling the truth.

 

[ARC150]

free will doesn't exist
it appears as if we have control over our lives because life is nothing more than a series of decisions
but
these decisions do not give us control over our lives
for example let's say i decide to buy a used car
i cannot go back in time and control what has happened to those cars before i came into contact with them
once i start driving my car i can choose to obey trafic laws thus decreasing the chances of death while on the road, but i cannot control whether or not the other drivers also obey the traffic laws
so i am sitting at a red light that turns green and i step on the gas pedal so that the car behind me won't rear-end me, but i cannot prevent the cars perpindicular to me from running through their red light and hitting my car from the side
the Columbine vale-dictorian could not have prevented Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold from aquiring explosives/guns the valedictorian was not the one responsible for the fact that the explosives never exploded (which would have killed everyone that was at the school that day)
i could go on and on but the point is that any random person has more control over the lives of those around him than the amount of control he has over his own life

My apologies if the above is put forth in a facetious or sardonic tone, but free will is not defined as control over one's life - it is merely the ability to make the decisions to which you refer; all your examples are examples of free will.

 

[LORD_RED_DRAGON]

My apologies if the above is put forth in a facetious or sardonic tone, but free will is not defined as control over one's life - it is merely the ability to make the decisions to which you refer; all your examples are examples of free will.

i guess my point was that even if you make your own choises (instead of someone else making your choices for you) you're still not really in control of your life and that it is this specific lack of control that lead to the formation of religion

 

[By Design]

i am particularly fascinated with Einstein’s theories of relativity, the notion that time and space are not constant is mind boggling. before such theories existed, time and space were considered a constant in the universe. really made me think about the true nature of the universe and the extent of what we have not yet discovered.

i dont know about the rest of you but, when i find myself gazing into the stars i get so frustrated with this society, how superficial and insignificant the concerns of the commoner can be compared to the infinite scale and beauty of the universe.

one of my favorite paradoxes is the pool table scenario; where the pockets are connected to their adjacent pocket, so, when a ball is sunk, it pops out the pocket across the table. that said, imagine that a ball is sunk and pops out of the adjacent pocket before it enters the first pocket (time travel to the past) and stops the ball from entering the original pocket, what happens now?

on the topic of time travel, is anyone familiar with chaos theory? under chaos theory, events in time follow a chaotic path. so, if someone were to travel to the past and change an individual event, that seemingly small effect would have drastic effects in years to come. im talking world altering events. take the movie "back to the future", when the hero travels back to the 50s, contact with anything (im talking even moving a few atoms when breathing) would send events of the future (that he and us all know and love) tumbling drastically off course. everyone he contacted would have changed anything they came into contact with. different people would have been born, forever changing history to be.

 

[Lemonv1]

An oxymoron that often amuses me is simply "light-heavyweight".

 

[Heavenscent]

Generalizations are incorrect.

 

[LORD_RED_DRAGON]

An oxymoron that often amuses me is simply "light-heavyweight".

yeah, that makes me laugh, too

 

[Neith]

It could be either true or false equally. But, if a man says that he ALWAYS lies, however, then that is false - because some of the time he is telling the truth.

If a man says he always lies he's either telling the truth about it, or he's lying about it and he actually does speak truthful words. Is that what you mean?

 

[proglodite]

schrodinger's cat has got be be my favorite. And the inside word is that einstein's theory of relativity will be disproved in the next 5-10 years

 

[Heavenscent]

This question always seems to annoy me:

Can you hear me?