[alancalverd]

Virgin birth, water into wine, feeding 5000 people with half a loaf, walking on water....is "gospel truth" not an oxymoron? 

[Halc]

Due to some problem, civilisation is leaving earth and will try to colonise some other planet and start a new world.   You can take the material that describes three theories in science.   Which three theories would you choose to take?

I had a hard time with this and have not until now contributed. I find it pretty implausible that the means to get to another world is somehow feasible but the means to take significant information along is not.

I would think skills would be more important than any scientific theory.  Literacy?  What good does even that do if certain other skills are not yet acquired?  How primitive is our group?  Need to start there if we're to give them something useful to advance.

#1: I'd send some kind of record of where they came from, since that will not easily be gleaned if the information is lost. The ability to read the record can wait in necessary.  This one counts since who knows what scientific theory they'd otherwise come up with to explain their sudden appearance without a nice trail of biological fossils to support something like evolution.


Concerning philosophy.

Questions such as (1) why are we here, (2) why is there good and evil, (3) what is the nature of human consciousness, (4) why does the universe exist, and many others may not trouble a logical being like your good self but a lot of humans seek answers to these questions and science cannot provide the answers.

That's right. Sans answers to these, there seems nothing to send with the ship.
Alan has posted an awful lot of philosophy for somebody who pokes so much fun of it.

Hi.

Religion is all about selling undisprovable hypotheses in order to control people's actions.

   No, that just sounds like human selfishness, corruption and some desire for power by a few people who have come to be in charge of the religion or else in charge of something else and just citing religion as supporting them.

Sorry, but I agree with Alan here. Religion is for herding sheep, and a group of herded sheep is more fit than the same sheep not herded. Hence it is not entirely a good idea to debunk religion as part of our 3 tidbits we take along. People who know what is going on are not so easily herded.

Religion is about not wanting to be alone, left feeling pointless, worried about not existing any longer, seeking the answers to fundamental questions  etc. etc.

AFAIK no other species suffers from any of these.

I would differ. Any social creature suffers from severance from its society. Go to a good pet shop and they'll tell you which species/breeds do well in isolation and which need to be kept with their own kind. Love birds are notoriously on the 2nd list.  I had a budgie which suffered significant stress from severance from his deafening buddies, but he eventually bonded with us and became super friendly.

I'm not sure how religion satisfies loneliness, but I do see it providing purpose. The loneliness is perhaps how they rope you into cults and financial scams and such, a tool for the herders.
.

[alancalverd]

Apart from the need for society, which would anyway be satisfied by being cooped up in a space ark with likeminded individuals, I seriously doubt whether the average dog or rat could make a living by persuading others to worry about ceasing to exist, or the origin of the universe. And even when groups of other species fight each other, it seems to be mostly about territory or food, not what they think the other guy's mother did on Sunday.     

[Eternal Student (OP)]

Hi.

I had a hard time with this and have not until now contributed. I find it pretty implausible that the means to get to another world is somehow feasible but the means to take significant information along is not.

    Indeed, the old radio show (which @alancalverd states is still running in a modernised form) has some issues that are just never asked about or answered.    In the radio show "Desert Island Discs", you could choose to take some music discs to a desert island that you've become stranded on (following a  ship-wreck), possibly deported to (following some crime you were falsely convicted of), or perhaps you just went there of your own choice because you've had enough of the rat-race etc.    You just don't ask questions like "is there a record player on the island and a small power station that provides a standard British mains electrical socket?"   Instead you just understand that all you're being asked to do is select the music you would most like to have with you on that desert island.

    If it helps, you can assume an alien race has kindly turned up at the last moment and agreed to take you and a few others to another planet.    Then they're going to leave us alone because......  i.d.k. .... stuff about minimal interference with other cultures until we develop our own  FTL  systems.    There is no time to find other people or download everything from a science repositiory.    So it just turns out that the job of taking some science stuff has fallen to you.

I would think skills would be more important than any scientific theory.  Literacy?

     You can assume the few people start with whatever skills they had when they were on earth.   It may be reasonable to assume they can read and may teach this skill to their children.    However, it's fine if you want to take some basic literacy teaching material to ensure that literacy skills are not lost.   That'll be one slot used in the 3 scientific theories you can take.   There's no rigid rules for this game, you get a yellow or red card at the discretion of the umpire.

----------------
    What's more interesting is that your personality can now be put under a microscope because you've made a reply.
You're worried about the fine details and you've spent a lot of time analysing a thing rather than jumping to some action.    In this situation, that possibly means that you end up taking very little because you just run out of time.   In other situations it's a good thing.   For example, you'd make a fair forum moderator in the new world.
     What you've actually ended up recommending can be paraphrased as follows:
1.   You don't have to take many scientific theories.
2.   You just take some facts.   Science will probably develop if evidence and facts can be found and especially if knowledge can be passed down rather than discovered anew in every generation.

     And maybe that'll work better than anything else.   However, you spent too long analysing rather than doing, the best answer award has already been given out and so you get nothing  -  but thanks for your reply.

Best Wishes.

[alancalverd]

You just don't ask questions like "is there a record player on the island and a small power station that provides a standard British mains electrical socket?"

DID was first broadcast in 1942. The "given" was a wind-up gramophone and

an infinite supply of gramophone needles

which suggests that the  originator, Roy Plomley, was a mathematician. A physicist would have  insisted on a semi-infinite supply with an initial condition of n> 0 and a minimum amplitude of 1.

I'm not sure how religion satisfies loneliness, but I do see it providing purpose.

No shortage of purpose here - we are going to export "civilisation", however we define it. Which raises an interesting question: if we are going to a habitable planet, it is reasonable to assume it already contains a balance of flora and fauna. To what extent are we entitled to alter that balance?