(Funny how you learn stuff when you keep asking questions, isn't it...)

I also found the conclusion to this debate.  Here's the press release.  Go SCIENCE and Critical Thinking!  One for the good guys.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE

COMMITTEE OFFICE, HOUSE OF COMMONS

7 Millbank, London SW1P 3JA

Tel. Nos. 020 7219 email: [email protected]

PRESS NOTICE

No. 66 of Session 2006-07

31 October 2007

PUBLICATION OF REPORT

SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENTS RELATING TO THE ABORTION ACT 1967

The Science and Technology Committee today sets out its conclusions on scientific developments which ought to be considered in any new Parliamentary debate relating to the Abortion Act 1967.

The Committee decided to hold its inquiry in order to inform parliamentary and public debate after it was ruled that abortion would fall within the remit of the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, which is likely to be presented to the House in the 2007/8 session.

The Committee makes clear that its conclusions and recommendations are restricted to those issues capable of scientific evaluation and recognises that other factors also come into play when abortion law reform is being considered by Parliament.

The Committee concludes that while survival rates at 24 weeks (the current upper limit for abortion) and over have improved since 1990, survival rates (viability) have not done so below that gestational point. The Committee concludes that there is no scientific basis - on the grounds on viability - to reduce the upper time limit.

The Committee supports the removal of the requirement for two doctors signatures before an abortion can be carried out. The Committee is concerned that the requirement for two signatures may be causing delays in access to abortion services and found no evidence of its value in terms of safety.

Nurses and midwives with suitable training and professional guidance, should not be prevented by law from carrying out all stages of early medical and early surgical abortion. The Committee says that it found there is no evidence that this would compromise patient safety or quality of care.

On the issue of foetal pain, the Committee says the evidence suggests that while foetuses have physiological reactions to stimuli, this does not indicate that pain is consciously felt, especially not below 24 weeks. It further concludes that these factors may be relevant to clinical practice but do not appear to be relevant to the question of abortion law.

While new 4D imaging techniques are a useful tool in diagnosis of foetal abnormality, there is no evidence they provide any scientific insights on the question of foetal sentience or viability.

Any debate on the impact an alteration to the upper time limit would have on those women who present late for abortion would be better informed if there was improved collection of information relating to the reasons why women come forward at this late stage and about how many women travel overseas for late abortions.

On the question of the merits of clarification or a definition of “seriously handicapped”, the Committee does not consider that an exhaustive list of abnormalities is feasible, but believes that guidance on what “serious handicap” means would be helpful; and further that data collection in this area be improved.

The Committee concludes there is no evidence relating to safety, effectiveness or patient acceptability that should deter Parliament from passing regulations which would enable women, who chose to do so, taking the second stage of early medical abortion at home. The Committee would like to see the necessary legislative change that would enable this to be pursued or at least piloted.

It also recommends that the clinical guidelines on abortion provision, including health risks associated with abortion, should ultimately be taken over by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).

Chairman of the Committee Phil Willis said: “Abortion is a complex issue. Legislative decisions are informed by ethical , moral, religious and political views, case law, scientific and medical evidence. As a Science and Technology Committee, we have focused on the science, and have done so rigorously.

“In our inquiry we have attempted to sift the evidence on scientific and medical developments since the last amendment of the law in 1990 and since the 1967 Act.

“We urge all MPs and the public to study the evidence we have taken and the conclusions we have reached.”

The Report is published at electronically at 0001 on Wednesday 31 October 2007.

Hard copies of the Report can be obtained from TSO outlets and from the Parliamentary Bookshop, 12 Bridge Street, Parliament Square, London SW1A 2JX (020 7219 3890) by quoting the appropriate HC number from Tuesday 6 November 2007.

 

the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster http://www.venganza.org/

Love it CrimsonEdge 

 

You know I've been anxiously waiting!   I'm going to be really sad if it turns out we're just using words differently, which I suspect might be the case.  Just to make sure we're on the same page, I don't think I've ever said that theism doesn't confer some benefit to its adherents, or that moderates can't live perfectly sane lives.

*I believe that theism, as a foundation for discovering truth and facilitating accurate assessment of personal life goals, is A) irrational because it relies on faith, which is completely subjective, and B) less conducive to effective problem solving on a personal and societal level for the same reason.

*I believe that moderates of any religion (defined as having a foundation of non-contingent faith) must be viewed as facilitators of extremist religion because A) They have no rational basis for arguing against extremism that can't be trumped by faith, and B) They validate faith as a means of discovering truth, thereby shifting fundamentalists from the category of "Crazy" to the category of "Over-zealous."

 

Most likely, I consider you a moderate, but you probably won't like what I think about that.  Here are my two main threads dealing with moderates.

Will Moderates Please Get Pissed? Please?

It's all about the Moderates

Also, you should read this thread to make sure you understand my position on contingent vs. non-contingent faith.

If you want to be extremely thorough, you'll read this one, too.  If you read all four of these threads (read all of the first two threads, because I do a good bit of clarifying as the threads progress) you should have a very good understanding of my position regarding faith and moderates.

 

 

 

No.

 

Ok, interesting. I will have to read more.

Ta da!
It's a first draft and I'll probably be doing a lot of re-writing in a couple of months. I'll also be spending this week ironing out formatting problems and possibly add one more essay.

In the meantime it's all up for critique.
Bon appetit!

It's the rationalist's masochistic way!

You could consider the two opponents to be different positions that your own mind holds, leaving your poor self with a cognitive dissonance until you resolve it.

On the wave/particle issue I don't really see a contradiction. Light is made up of particles but when there are many particles they, together, exhibit wave behaviour. A bit like how the waves at the sea side are made up of lots of little water molecules.

Obviously it won't be as simple as that, as any quantum physicist could explain, but the point is that there doesn't really have to be a contradiction when you see what it means for light to both be a particle and a wave.

 

 

That's not a condradiction. It is not both simultaneously, it is only a particle when it is being observed since the exchange of data collapses the wave function. 

 quote Einstein "All these fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to the answer to the question 'what are light quanta?' Nowadays every Tom, Dick and Cpt_pineapple thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken."

Cpt_pineapple the duality question is currently undergoing experimental verification, ? would you care to jump the gun with your old textbook answer ? as definitive, as "simultaneously" looks from early experiments like a real possibility

The double slit experiment, shows particles as in one of two states, wave or particle, but ............... they might be both simultaneously, unfortunately Dr quantum hasn't made a video of this yet, but the double slit experiment has moved on and been refined, new experiments are currently trying to determine whether simultaneously is an option, early experiments, although debated are showing simultaneous

Meh! Turns out that I wasn't supposed to put them up where I did and they all got taken down.
I'll work out what to do with them next.
I'll let you know.

Dude'es this is not some ways of describing how the same mathematical equation behaves, this can be confirmed or denied empirically

Wave–particle duality, superposition , quantum tunneling, Quantum entanglement, (oh my, euclidean 3+1 space will never be the same,)

light can be a electromagnetic wave, or a particle, or a wave function, or a small plastic duck called sam, simultaneously

Experimentally observable quantum correlations demonstrate that intuitive features of realism must be abandoned.

An experimental test of non-local realism

Quantum physics has contradictions, there it is, one may choose to ignore these contradictions, or gloss over the empirical evidence, by saying it's just a mathematical theory, or other experiments will determine the truth because I know intuitively that reality/realism is real, .but if you do you have abandoned truth, and reason

 

And there it is ? do you see it

In many situations, quantum physics/mechanics, psychology and so on, one may encounter, such contradictions, and whether such contradictions only have one correct answer is at the moment uncertain, to imply that reason can work in such black and white terms, and thus place the truth at ones feet, is to go beyond the limitations, of reason itself,

 Reason itself is an incredibly useful tool so is logic and mathematics, but these tools are limited............ we need better tools, but until we have these new tools, one must understand and accept the limitations of the tools we have



There is madness in my method,
This is purely about the truth, "When we come across two positions that contradict each other, only one of them can be right" this statement is not entirely truthful, one might add the word usually thus" When we come across two positions that contradict each other,usually only one of them can be right, I'm sure Strafio won't like this, but there it is ? unless you can think of a better way of describing this limitation in reason

 

Furthermore, I'm not a quantum physicist, but if I understand it correctly, quantum particles are something.  To us, they appear to be both a wave and a particle, but this is describing the limitation of our observation and methods of categorization, not a true duality of their existence.  If we get down to brass tacks, they exist as something and we just have a lot of trouble explaining it.

(Feel free to correct me on that.  I'm basically asking if I understand it correctly.)

 

 

 

Possibly an accurate descriptions of particles or ectromagnetic waves or wave functions, just doesn't exist, they're still arguing about the nature of light itself, personally I think it has a lot to do with trying to describe something that exists in 5 or more dimensions, when we can only think or express ourselves in 4 dimensions, btw I'm no physicist, I'm a humble minimum wage factory worker

I like this

"When we come across two statements which contradict each other, one of them must be false unless we are speaking strictly within the terms of a system that is known to have apparent contradictions,

 

 

I actually have a reading comprehension problem, so the dry humour didn't help.

 

 

Also, I don't think you should have used humour on the forums in the first place:

 

Thanks, Cernunnos!

That all makes sense to me, and it lines up with what I was trying to say.

 

 

Source, wikipedia

Various neutron interferometry experiments demonstrate the subtleness of the notions of duality and complementarity in an interesting way. By passing through the interferometer, the neutron appears to act as a wave. Yet upon passage, the neutron is subject to gravitation, which one might think only particles, and not waves, are subject to. As the neutron interferometer is rotated through Earth's gravitational field a phase change between the two arms of the interferometer can be observed, accompanied by a change in the constructive and destructive interference of the neutron waves on exit from the interferometer. Some interpretations claim that understanding the interference effect requires one to concede that a single neutron takes both paths through the interferometer at the same time; a single neutron would "be in two places at once", as it were. Since the two paths through a neutron interferometer can be as far as five to 15 cm apart, the effect is hardly microscopic. This is similar to traditional double-slit and mirror interferometer experiments where the slits (or mirrors) can be arbitrarily far apart. So, in interference and diffraction experiments, neutrons behave the same way as a photon (or an electron) of corresponding wavelength.

Cernunnos keep going superposition next pls

 

As I understand it, there is not clear evidence that any one person manipulated the data.  It seems that each person involved in the chain has plausible deniability.

 

Anyway, two of the essays are up in the forum.
There's the one that Dev was quoting and there's also another one which goes into why we avoid contradictions. I thought that I'd post them together as they're both interlinked.

Yes Cpt_pineapple but if one accepts the theory, one also accepts superpositioning, eigenstates , the same particle can be the test particle, while simultaneously being all of the particle that make the atoms which make up the test equipment, oh my , it doesn't solve the contradiction it makes it worse, explaining stuff in 3+1 space while existing in 4+1 space is problematic at best, can you see this ?