@12 ZenSufi

Your analogy might work if it weren’t for the fact that
a) music is vibration, which can be felt by other senses (and is in fact used in many auditoriums for the hard-of-hearing as a way for them to be included in performances)
b) instruments can be built to detect music/sound, which then creates objective data

Show me objective evidence of god and I might ‘listen’. Until then, all you’ve got is a fairly bad analogy.

(Ah Carey beat me to it @ 21)

@52 Joe

You missed the point. You agree that believing or not is someone’s own personal business: and yet, McLeroy was doing his best to impose his beliefs onto the students of Texas (and the rest of the USA) by demanding creationism be included in textbooks. This has nothing to do with making fun of his personal beliefs, it has everything to do with freedom of and *from* religion. Just because snark was the tactic used doesn’t make it any less about that issue.

BTW, having your hands over your ears doesn’t make a person unable to hear, it just lowers the volume. You’d never sell this story at a rock concert.

My opinions don’t have to be scientific, but I do observe the science which explains reality…….I accept scientific observations, and try to interpret them with what I feel is my reality…..When the universe becomes two curtains flexing together, and bubble universes, and worm holes inside of black holes, I know that something put me here and you there….I call that something God and I believe that God may be everything…..Just my guess based on your science and my beliefs…..

First off, you should know how hard it is to read your text when the only punctuation marks you use are the comma and the ellipsis. Have you never heard of periods (full stops), semicolons, colons and so on?

Second, you seem to be stating your own personal reality vs. doctrine reconciliation as if it had validity for any other person on the planet. Whatever works for you, that’s fine; but, unless you care to explain its relevance for others, don’t expect anyone else to be more than passingly interested.

Third, there is a difference between reality and doctrine that you seem to elide over. Reality is (basically) that which can be shown to be, whereas doctrine is a purely human invention. Reality can be shared through the media of evidence and reason, and thus a consensual truth can be approximated. As far as doctrine goes, it can only be shared among those who accept the same doctrine without questioning it, because pretty nearly all doctrine falls apart under scrutiny.

“Even Phil knows that when that giant asteroid comes crashing down on him that he is face to face with God”

Superheated plasma does not have a face.

“I have analyzed the data, searched the cosmos and studied the equations and I find no evidence for any ‘music’…”

Your story falls apart right there. You see, I actually have studied the equations, and music falls right out of them naturally. I could start right away with time signatures and fractions…but that’s too easy. What’s the fun in that? No, no, it gets better…

Part of my thesis at MIT involved a study of the structural dynamics of space telescopes. The best presentation I’ve ever given was connected to this work…I brought a guitar, and I used it as a practical demonstration of the equations of vibration. This included showing how major chords fell right out of the equations that describe a vibrating string…the string’s first several fundamental frequencies correspond to the notes that make up a major chord (well…close. As it turns out, the notes that fall out are based on trig functions, but we tune musical instruments using logarithms as a compromise so instruments can play equally well in all 12 keys instead of only playing one key really well. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_temperament)

Was that enough math-speak for you? See, there are plenty of equations out there that describe music perfectly, and I haven’t even started talking about music theory, like the cycle of fifths, yet. Music itself is built upon a foundation of mathematics.

As a side note, now you’re going to ask, “What on Earth does this have to do with space telescopes?” Of course, I wasn’t just doing this for the hell of it. Satisfied that the guitar followed the basic rules of structural dynamics – the same rules that govern the vibrations of the telescope – I then proceeded to use it as a simulation of a space telescope. One goal of my work was to size a space telescope’s struts so that it’s first fundamental frequency was no less than a given frequency (20 Hz, if I recall correctly). I then demonstrated a technique on the guitar called a “harmonic” – fixing a point on the guitar string to eliminate certain frequencies – then expanded the idea to the telescope: by adding structural members to constrain certain parts of the structure, I could eliminate the first vibration mode entirely, which means I could size the telescope structural members to the original second frequency instead, which led to an overall reduction in the mass of the telescope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guitar_harmonic