Chaos

We haven't made a determination on this, but we will discuss.

Yep, this space will be welcoming to be LGBTQ people regardless of what month it is. In addition to what Ene said: it's a release month. We have a lot more important things to do, particularly since this hurts no one and has no bearing on our policies.

Post Isles of the Emberdark typos here.

Post your Isles of the Emberdark reactions here! Contains full book spoilers.

Since Brandon said Isles of the Emberdark is "high cosmere connectivity," this forum will have full cosmere spoilers.

Ah, thanks. I put that in there and in Discord when I finished the first draft of my novel, which was longer than Well of Ascension. Ooof! Thankfully, it went pretty well, but now it's revision time.

We will have a spoiler board as usual, yes.

Hey, not every thread is an RP thread, guys. Keep it to the RP boards... In fact, I'm hiding these off topic RP posts. Someone asking about a thing is not permission for totally different people to RP about said thing and not even acknowledge the OP. It's just a question and answer, and the RP is not appropriate.

As far as I understand it, IPS 5 shouldn't reset rep. The numbers might vary a little as it will recount them, but I wouldn't worry about that.

Yep, just go to Account Settings. There's an option to change it there, by Change Password.

Oh, interesting, this is just because that link has been incorrect for who knows long. Thanks for pointing that out. This has probably been wrong for like 7-9 years. I have fixed this now but due to caching, this will take some time for the fix to propagate.

Found a typo in a Stormlight book? Below are all the typo threads for each Stormlight book, so please report them there. The Way of Kings Words of Radiance Oathbringer Dawnshard Rhythm of War Wind and Truth

Hi, posts in Introduce Yourself should not have spoiler questions or Cosmere discussion, as we have other boards for that. I have moved this into the Wind and Truth spoiler board.

I genuinely have no idea what this is but I moved this to Forum Games. Report the topic if you'd like it elsewhere.

No rules on this, I would quote and also link the source.

Go into any forum and there's a Start new topic button at the top.

Hi there, welcome! The 17th Shard discussion board is for talking more about the site itself. I moved this to the Cosmere Discussion board.

Thanks for reading it! Sorry it was so long. And hey, if you think the evidence suffices, awesome! In my experience, what people want to believe has an immense influence on this all. The truth is true regardless on if we believe it, after all. But if you find it compelling outside your desire for it to be true, excellent! As for me, I would love any evidence of the supernatural that is outside psychology. (Unfortunately, "people being transformed" into something better is something that's common in so many denominations/religions/self help books, which to me smells more like psychology.) Cheers

Hi Frenzee, you absolutely don't have to respond to me responding to you, of course, but you did make many claims and directly addressed me. Do you believe I still have faith after what I said? If so, what do I have faith in, in the way that you believe in things?

For the comment that "atheists believe there is no God," please see my previous posts on this. I feel I have adequately dissected the matter that no, atheists in general do not make the assertive case there is definitively no God. As for the others, this is a false equivalence. I don't think there's any scientist who believes a scientific claim to anything approaching the level of confidence and faith of any believer I have ever met. Scientists aren't at altars shaping their morality around the theory of relativity or atomic theory. Scientists accept that all truth is provisional, are honest in every paper that there are more questions to be answered. Any expert will be careful to qualify their statements. It is not my intent to denigrate belief in this next clause, but I would say I have seen massive confidence in believers in claims. "Oh yes. I know for certain there is this all-powerful being. I know for certain I have definitely felt Him. I know for certain what will happen when I die." The confidence is almost an identity marker. It cannot be wrong, otherwise you don't belong in the social group. Science isn't like that. If someone expanded on Einstein's theory of relativity, I'd say, "Wow! That's awesome! Now we know more things." And then I just accept the evidence, because I believe claims on the merits of the evidence. Science is a method, it is not my identity. Also for me, if I am wrong, I want to know it. I only want to accept things that can be shown incontrovertibly true. If that is the supernatural, I am happy to change my worldview to accommodate. I have very literally never had a spiritual experience in my life. I am not convinced spiritual experiences even exist (though, obviously, many many people in this thread would disagree). But if I had a spiritual experience and could verify that it was spiritual/supernatural for certain, I am changing my worldview instantly. I want to be the least wrong I possibly can be, and that is always a lifelong process! Now to go into some specific lines you had. 1. "Most of them believe in the Big Bang" Because there is evidence to support it! Multiple independent lines of evidence, in fact. In science, we bombard claims with tons of scrutiny, and the thing that stands up to scrutiny is the thing that survives. Don't believe in the Big Bang? That's fine, but where's your model to explain the cosmic microwave background radiation? This was a very simple prediction of the Big Bang model. Check out the curve below. This is assuming the universe is hot everywhere in the early universe, and what would that would mean. Well, then we detected the cosmic microwave background, and the red dots are the observations. Now I don't know about you, if I made a concrete prediction and it fit the model that well, that's incredible. I've done enough applied math (where you make mathematical models to fit data so you can make future predictions) to know that this is genuinely awesome. If you have a better explanation, I guarantee you will win a Nobel Prize. In science, you are rewarded for showing that the experts are wrong. You just need to bring the data to persuade people. This isn't the only evidence, mind you, but just one very compelling piece of specific evidence. Other evidence is how the Big Bang explains the data on the abundance of the light elements in the universe. Are there details that need to be worked out? Yes, and cosmologists will tell you about them. But we sure know a lot! We have very concrete evidence that we can all see (notably, without believing the claim in advance) that points in a specific direction. This is why scientists can come to overall consensus and overwhelming agree. They are basing their conclusions on the evidence, and when the evidence points in a direction, that's what they agree. (For me, this is what I want in evidence for a claim, and what I find profoundly lacking in any god belief. Tell me the specific evidence that we can all agree is there that points exclusively to your specific version of God existing. Why your claims over any other religion?) Now, I generally concur with the scientific consensus because I am honest that I don't know a lot of things, and probably people who know more about a thing they have spent their entire life studying a subject could go into immense detail on literally anything a layperson asks them. And honestly, I think you do, too? You accept the ideas that atoms exist. You accept that bacteria and viruses exist. You take allergy medications during the spring if you get sniffly, and you don't really think about how awesome it is that we understand atoms, molecules, and specific molecules have a specific effect on your body, and other molecules can affect those other molecules and make you feel better. You just assume it works. You take for granted the absolutely insane confluence of physics and engineering to make your phone or computer work. Apple's M4 chip has transitors that are 3 nanometers long, and has 28 billion of them. By comparison, the smallest bacterium ever is 370-890 nanometers. It is almost inconceivable, almost preposterous to believe. Yet we build them. If you want to know about atoms, bacteria, viruses, medicine, or any scientific thing... you can learn why we think the way we do. You will learn the mountains and mountains of evidence for things that we know, and how we came to know them. You will personally do experiments to verify them. You will learn all the weird things that do not yet know. You will try to prove the greats wrong. Science is all about checking its work and trying to show you are wrong. It's teaching you how to thing rationally so you are the least wrong possible. Take some science classes and you'll learn basics, but the reality is so, so very complicated. 2. "It's the same for life. No one really knows how life was created, but they do believe that life was created somehow, without knowledge of how." Abiogenesis, the study of how life began on Earth, is a vibrant field of study. Though the exact method is not known, there are many steps we know very well, and it is not so outlandish an idea as it seems. We know that basically as early in Earth's history that life could exist (in other words, after we stopped getting bombarded by asteroids), life developed almost immediately. That suggests it's not really that hard if you have the right pieces. The building blocks of life, amino acids, are found in space. So really they are all over the place. We have found molecules that can self-replicate, and RNA can do that. It's honestly so freaking cool, and very, very complicated, but if we know plausible pathways for macromolecules to form, is it so outlandish to think that it's just a consequence of the physics and chemistry? Also, I do want to note, your phrasing very specifically snuck in the conclusion you'd want to show. You said "No one really knows how life was created," which assumes that life was created, and that phrasing assumes in it a creator. That may be the case, but that would be a claim that requires evidence to properly evaluate. I would phrase it as "no one knows exactly how life began". 3. "they do believe that life was created somehow, without knowledge of how. That is faith. Even if you are atheist, because Faith is believing in something that cannot or has not been seen or proven." I would agree that faith is believing in something that cannot or has not been seen (I would phrase it as "without evidence"). I don't have faith. When there's not evidence for something, I just say that I don't know. Do we know how life arose? No, but we have evidence that points in certain directions about the mechanisms. Do we know how the universe began? No, there are mysteries there. But we know the universe was hot basically everywhere, and have physically seen evidence of that. So at least that much! (This question is may not even make sense to ask. Another phrasing would be, "What existed before time existed?" which instantly assumes that time exists. Do I know what happens when we die? I don't know, but all signs point to a cease of existence, and your atoms being reused over and over for millions of years to come. Do I know the meaning of life? Nope. I do not. That's okay. (Though I would argue this is a question that probably cannot even have an answer.) I am very comfortable not knowing things. In my experience, so many things in the universe are hard and unintuitive to understand. That's okay. There may be things we can literally never know! Terrifying? Maybe! We will never know if there is some limit to our knowledge. Our knowledge will certainly increase as time goes on, though, assuming we don't destroy ourselves. This is not true. The crucifixion happened around Passover. Passover, by definition, happens at a full moon (it's a lunar calendar, after all). Full moons happen when the Earth is between the sun and the moon, so it is very literally impossible for a solar eclipse to happen around Passover. This is a great example to what I was referring to about confidence with faith. "Why did this happen? Because I believe the Bible." This thread is not here to combat beliefs, and it is not my intent to do so. You are very much entitled to have the beliefs you. I merely bring this up because this is an example of how these types of thinking are very, very different. I believe absolutely nothing to the extent that you did just here. I actually know a lot about this and the science on Genesis (and its immense scientific inaccuracies if taken literally, which is certainly does not have to be), and if you would like to discuss it further, I am happy for anyone to PM me and I will discuss it at great length. If not, all good! I'll probably take my leave in this thread. My intent is very much not to get in the way of people's beliefs, but people pinged me and talked about science, and science is all about the data, and we can all see the same data. But if anyone has questions about why I think what I do, please feel free to ask. (And if any religious person is under the impression I have faith in anything, in the same way Christians have faith that Jesus rose from the dead, I would love a very specific example! I am more than happy to re-evaluate any statement I made and examine what I am saying. As far as I can see, this is a totally foreign concept to me.) I was a bit slackery with citations here, but to the best of my knowledge, every single scientific statement is accurate to the scientific consensus. If people are curious, I can find said sources. Let's do that in PMs, though.

Pinging staff is not a good way to get our attention. Please report the relevant posts, which will notify all staff members via email. Pings almost assuredly will not have email notifications. Thanks! Anyway, yeah, if people want a thing moved, just report it.