Sure. But pain =/= evil. That's the distinction I was pointing out. — khaled

The distinction is as pointless as trying to talk to Abby in private. :point: Abby & Britanny.

Perhaps this is more to your taste:

The more i look at the universe, just the less convinced i am that something benevolent is going on — Neil deGrasse Tyson

I said "Why did God make it so that we can commit evil acts" not "Why did God make it so that we experience pain", those are very different. — khaled

Sans pain, evil is meaningless.

We aren't "truly free" given we can't levitate at will either by this logic. — khaled

Good point but explain to us how levitation can be moral/immoral? God, remember, is only concerned with moral responsibility. Perhaps there's nothing good/bad about being able to levitate or walk through walls.

What I found interesting:

Brain waves
1. Gamma waves: Intense concentration
2. Beta waves: Most common, normal awake state
3. Alpha waves: Awake, relaxation
4. Theta waves: Awake, deep relaxation
5. Delta waves: Dreamless sleep & deep meditation! ( :chin: )

What caught my eye is :point:

The other opinion about death is that it is oblivion, the complete cessation of consciousness, not only unable to feel but a complete lack of awareness, like a person in a deep, dreamless sleep. Socrates says that even this oblivion does not frighten him very much, because while he would be unaware, he would correspondingly be free from any pain or suffering. Indeed, Socrates says, not even the great King of Persia could say that he ever rested so soundly and peacefully as he did in a dreamless sleep. — Eternal Oblivion

Brain + Delta waves = Brain

Ergo...

We cannot walk through brick walls, yet we exercise "free will". Explain why we could not exercise "free will" if we also could not commit evil acts. — 180 Proof

Think of evil as maximizing options. Sure, God made it impossible to walk through brick walls but at the very least, making us capable of evil, He expanded our choices.

Interesting point though! Would being able to walk through walls be a good thing or a bad thing, morally that is? :chin:

generalization — Shawn

That's the problem right there!

Whenever we try to generalize, we end up in hot water. Unfortunately or not, we can't help it - we need rules god damn it! Without some patterns how the hell are we to make sense of the world? Attending to the particulars of every thing/situation - treating them as unique - is going to overload our minds and cause a system crash.

What? Me, generalizing? Nonsense!

So, "deus vult", he intends the "unfortunate consequences" too. — 180 Proof

But only so that we're truly free. That's the whole point.

Not a worry. I'm thinking at this point that I did not write a clear enough idea in my desire to keep it within a certain size. That is on me, and no one else.

About Hume, Hume was talking about causality as an induction of belief about the future. In other words, there was no reason to believe the rules of causality (or really, rules of anything) would be the same tomorrow. However, that doesn't mean we cannot test the rules of today, and come to the conclusion that causality exists. Hume noted that our belief that the rules would be stable tomorrow could be nothing more than a belief. So far, that belief has held true. So can we know the future? Never.

So in the same vein, we can examine the distant past. Perhaps it is the case that billions of years ago, the rules of the universe functioned differently. Perhaps objects existed that were pure chaos and had no explanation for their being. While we can trace up what the past "should" be if the rules are the same, its really a matter of faith. Still, I think its a matter of faith we can cling to. Further, I can see no alternative to chaos and causality. Chaos is essentially a first cause, while causality is the expected response to external forces.

So, with the inductive belief that causality still existed back then, and as I have no other belief in my mind, I try to come to a logical conclusion with causality, and with a first cause, what must necessarily exist without prior causality. — Philosophim

What I find intriguing is that there's a difference between acausality (no patterns) and amended causality (changing patterns). I think people, at least I do, conflate the two.

Allow me to explain.

Hume's problem of induction is ambiguous as regards these two (acausality vs. amended causality) because in both cases our predictions, based on how things were and are, fail. Is it because the world has become patternless (no laws/rules) or is it that it begins to adopt new patterns (a different set of rules/laws)? In the former, causality ceases to exist but in the latter, causality persists, only in a different form.

Against this backdrop, we could explore possibilities in re the so-called laws of nature e.g. in the case of the Big Bang (first cause), was gravity negative?

$F = -G\frac{m_1m_2}{r^2}$

?

Man might be to blame for his evil acts, but "God" is responsible for making it possible to commit evil acts; ergo, "God" is not omnibenevolent, or worthy of worship. — 180 Proof

God wanted to give us our freedom and that it seems has unfortunate consequences viz. evil.

And what would that matter absent a complete specification? It would just be "looks like" at best, and the sensible man would leave it at that. He'd be a Pyrrhonist and simply acknowledge the reality of the appearance of the hanged man. — tim wood

As a Pyrrhonist, I should suspend judgment on whether the man hanging from the tree indicates evil/justice. Skepticism is, at the end of the day, awareness of possibilities.

Man might be to blame for his evil acts, but "God" is responsible for making it possible to commit evil acts; ergo, "God" is not omnibenevolent, or worthy of worship. — 180 Proof

Choice!

He could’ve made it physically near impossible or impossible to perform evil acts (indestructible bodies for instance). Why didn’t he do so? It wouldn’t be infringing on our free will any more than limiting us from levitating at will is an infringement on free will. — khaled

Free will requires evil, ergo pain & suffering, to be possible. You can't talk about free will without conceding pain, suffering should be part of the overall scheme. So, when you assert that God could've taken suffering out of the equation, what you actually mean is we shouldn't have free will. Evil is a key component of free will, morally speaking. Choice is central to the free will question.

What exactly do you mean. Free will fits into this a 100 different ways. — khaled

How? God can't be evil if the evil is our doing.

I can tell it's a corpse left to rot in the open. Probably a suicide. :mask: — 180 Proof

:rofl: I always fail to convince you!

If it’s an infant and not a man, I know it’s evil.

There have been infants tortured to death before.

Ergo problem of evil (among many other sources of evil)

Also God would never need to enforce this justice. Justice is a punishment you inflict on someone for hurting you or someone else. You can’t hurt God, so he’s not the grieving party. And God could’ve removed every instance of someone hurting someone else, and chose not to do so. So in both cases, (whether the punishment is justified by you supposedly hurting God or someone else), God is being evil — khaled

I think you're missing an important piece in the puzzle - free will.

The modern interpretation differs, unsurprisingly. One way to put it might be to say that it treats both theories models (the new label is somewhat tied to the new interpretation) as applying to distinct and equally hypothetical worlds, in which their respective assumptions hold by definition. What the measurements taken in the real world tell us is that Einstein's hypothetical world is a better approximation of ours than Newton's. Nevertheless, in the vast majority of practical situations, the disagreement between the two approximations is negligible. The fact that Newton's approximation is discovered to be non-negligibly imprecise under certain circumstances simply tells us not to rely on it in those sorts of circumstances. And the fact that Einstein's approximation holds up doesn't mean that it ceases to be an approximation, just that we've not yet achieved the precision or encountered the circumstances under which it, too, buckles. So both models are considered, a priori, to be precise within their hypothetical worlds and imprecise in the real world. Newton's model is lower-precision than Einstein's, but also lower-effort. Pick whichever fits a given situation, and don't worry about that elusive concept called "truth". — onomatomanic

What is of concern to me is why an entirely new model needs to be built from scratch simply to explain a more precise measurement if that is what's actually going on? Something doesn't add up. It's like saying that measurement data gathered using a high school student's ruler/scale requires a different explanatory model than measurement data acquired with a physicist's vernier calipers. I think I'm getting mixed up between accuracy and precision here but somehow I don't think it's my fault (see Lord Kelvin's quote in the OP).

:ok: :up:

1. Am I correct about what I said about Newton? Had his measurements for mass and distance been more precise (had more decimal places) than what was available to him, he would've realized that the formula $F = G\frac{m_1m_2}{r^2}$ was wrong.

2. Why can't the output of a formula not be more precise than the input?

Limiting global warming requires accuracy, precision, and honesty in reporting greenhouse gas emissions and reductions. There is a lot of inaccuracy, imprecision (or worse crudeness), and dishonesty in reporting national and industrial emissions. Honesty/dishonesty is a major problem, but in the context of this thread method, accuracy, precision, consistency, and so forth of measurement is critical.

One more reason for failing to limit global warming (regardless of what the reps at the COP26 say) is inaccuracy and imprecision in measurement. The result is a kind of climate-fraud, where officials claim accomplishments which simply do not exist. A report in the Washington Post noted that carbon from SE Asia palm oil production is underreported, thanks to both imprecision and willful errors. In the US, the Post reported that 25% of the gas in retail cooling systems is lost every year. Is that because of neglect, indifference, imprecision, inaccuracy, or what?

We will not be able to save ourselves if we continue sloppy manufacturing and agricultural operations. Without precise data we are wandering around in the hot dark. — Bitter Crank

I see. So one way polluters (governments, big oil, etc.) can wiggle their way out of a tight spot is to fudge the numbers - lower the resolution of relevant figures (make them imprecise) and suddenly we lose the clarity necessary to hold entities to account. Nice!

Lies, damned lies, and statistics. — Mark Twain/Benjamin Disraeli

Numbers never lie, after all: they simply tell different stories depending on the math of the tellers. — Luis Alberto Urrea

Like the PoE, the PoH is only a "problem" for the notion of an omnibenevolent deity. "Hell", btw, is just imaginary revenge-porn sadism, nothing more. :halo: Again, justice =/= evil, Fool. — 180 Proof

A little thought experiment for you to consider:

Say it's in the 1800s. You're riding from your small town to another settlement and along the way you come across a man dangling from a tree with a noose around his neck - he's dead of course. Can you tell just from what you see - a man hanged to death - whether it's murder (evi) or it's a judicial execution (justice)?

His One of Necessity has no beginning; it is ever and always. Did the One make our universe that has time in it linearly or did the One make it all at once and then replay it slower so as to be experienced in time? Or did the One always have everything in it, such as our universe, and then plays it slower. — PoeticUniverse

I haven't the slightest idea.

I'm rather surprised that people who complain about the problem of evil simultaneously maintain that justice is a critical aspect of morality. If they do subscribe to the latter then the possibility of evil being actually justice can't be so easily ruled out or dismissed out of hand.

What about hell? I've been a regular on the forum for the past 6 or so years and the problem of hell is a rare topic. I suppose people, deep down, realize that hell is simply bad people getting their just deserts.

Suppose a certain measurement, say mass (m) is made with better and better instruments (precision + /accuracy +)

True value of m: 2.0165394830013 kg

Instrument X

m = 2.017 kg

Scientific theory T

Instrument Y

m = 2.01654 kg

Scientific theory U

Instrument Z

m = 2.0165395 kg

Scientific theory V

Is it that T = U = V?

OR

Is it that T $\neq$ U $\neq$ V?

I'm increasinly persuaded that this. our "lovely" earth, is in reality hell itself. Of course the descriptions of hell don't match with earthly facts but hear me out. Warning, twisted logic ahead.

Why do I think earth is actually hell?

For one simple reason: We can't seem to be able to do good in a way it's truly good or, on the flip side, things that are truly horrific in the moral sense seem to have a place in our lives e.g. torture is, on certain occasions, justifiable. So, in our "wonderful" lives spent here on dear ol' earth, you'll be put in situations where you can't be/do good or, at other more lamentable circumstances, you will be asked/forced to cause injury or death. By comparison the Devil, yes Satan himself, has a better happiness score than the denizens of earth - at least Lucifer isn't burdened by moral dilemmas of the kind and complexity humans have to deal with at every turn. For The Deceiver, it's rather simple - fuck 'em and fuck 'em "good"! Not so for us who want to do the right thing but can't and let's not forget how bad we have to be just to do a little good. :joke:

Not bad, it seems to support the origin of "lizard people" :grin: — SpaceDweller

Yes, I do recall reading that a coupla suns ago. We have bigger worries though viz. God. In an odd and very peculiar way we know He's the one behind all this - from paper cuts to volcanoes to magnitude 9 and higher earthquakes to the tsunamis that follow them - and yet no conspiracy theorist ever writes a single line on/about the guy upstairs, the so-called white-bearded skydaddy of religion. It's as if we've blocked him out like we do sometimes to someone who's a royal pain in the ass ( :lol: ). As Willaim Cowper said, 1788/1778 AD, "God moves in mysterious ways". Well then God's the mother of all, Texas-sized, conspiracy theory there is.

Just a moment...there's someone knocking at my door. :wink:

Why read what so many others (including me) writes about Witty and not you just read Witty's work instead ? — 180 Proof

As always, good question! :smile:

You haven't read the TLP in full. You've no idea (sense) of what Witty means by 'nonsense'. Hint: Witty does not refute himself, rather he reorients philosophy by pointing out (only in 70-odd pp.) what 'philosophical statements' can show (re: describe, eludicate) and what they cannot say (re: explain). — 180 Proof

On the first charge levied against me - "...haven't read the TLP in full..." - I plead guilty. However, in my defense, I did read the SEP and Wiki entries on Wittgenstein's take on language and philosophy. Too, over the years I've gained a deeper understanding of what it is that he wishes to convey. Like it or not, for better or for worse, my conclusion is that Wittgenstein held the opinion that philosophy, everything that has to do with interpersonal and intrapersonal communication, is simply symbol manipulation according to the rules of grammar - there being, as per Wittgenstein himself, no essence to words. That's not all, these symbols (words and some letters like "a" and "i") are also treated within systems of reasoning or, in some cases, unreasoning, depending on where you fall on the Maverick scale.

I know you disagree and I know you're a scholar with credentials someone like me could only dream of BUT...at this juncture I'd like to stick to my guns and say Wittgenstein's philosophy can be summed up as reducing humans to computers (syntactically and logically adept but semantically challenged). We don't understand either ourselves (private language) and nor do we understand each other (Tower of Babel).

And you hit the nail on the head about how critical , I quote, "what Witty means by nonsense" is.

Thank you for your time. Good day and don't forget to be awesome!

Anything taken out of context, especially by one ignorant of the context, can be made to seem to say anything. À la principle of explosion! Sophistry (Charlatanry) 101. In other words, one can't "throw away a ladder" that one hasn't bothered "to climb". Fool is as Fool does, no less — 180 Proof

Wittgenstein's statement, context-independent, is nonsensical e.g. he claims that if anyone understands him, that person would realize Wittgenstein's philosophy is nonsensical. It's paradoxical to assert that one understands the nonsensical. What sayest thou, o wise one?

Update

@180 Proof and others as well. What means this :point:

Wittgenstein's Ladder (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus)

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)

   He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

?

That said, there is a certain interpretation of Wittgenstein I've warmed up to viz. philosophy, all discourse in fact, is simply symbolic manipulation, including but not limited to logic reminiscent of Searle's Chinese Room. Nobody understands a word they're saying is my point à la Wittgenstein's ladder.

What's inexplicable though is much like how we have no clue as to the existence of free will and still feel, our world is structured accordingly, we do possess free will, we have what could be described as an illusion of understanding. — TheMadFool

I finally get what you're trying to say OP.

Hume: There is no logical necessity in causality. No reason why if the first two times I hit a ball and it rolled away, at a particular speed and direction, the third time I repeat my action, the ball should faithfully replicate the behavior precisely as before.

The idea of cause, we can forget about first cause, as having to do with logical necessity is a category mistake - like saying red is loud!

[...]This completely changed their way of life. We did not domesticate wheat. It domesticated us. The word “domesticate” comes from the Latin domus, which means “house.” Who’s the one living in a house? Not the wheat. It’s the Sapiens. — Yuval Noah Harari (Book Sapiens - Agriculutural Revolution)

A similar argument maybe made for domesticated animals. We, humans, are the ones who have to do the dirty work - torturing, killing animals - but animals, they can pretend to be innocent - oh no! we (animals) are the victims of mankind's inherently wicked nature - and get away wiith it all.

Here we are, all guilt-ridden, that we're, dialing it down a bit, mean to animals but isn't it a possibility that they (animals) are the ones who make us so?

Fruits are so sweet! Meat too is, if you know what I mean. Why? Why?

Maya!

God moves in mysterious ways. — William Cowper

Dinosaurs went extinct about 65 million years ago (at the end of the Cretaceous Period), after living on Earth for about 165 million years. — www.usgs.gov

Approximately 300,000 years ago, the first Homo sapiens — anatomically modern humans — arose alongside our other hominid relatives. — www.forbes.com

Humans have been humans for a period of time that's 0.2% of the dinosaur age. Look how much we've achieved but among all that one particular ability stands out - space exploration. My theory is that dinosaurs in the 165 million years they were on earth perfected space tech and left the earth for another planet in another solar system, perhaps even to another galaxy, leaving earth to mammals, bequeathing it to, ultimately, humans who, I suppose, have to follow suit.

This is my favorite conspiracy theory. :grin:

Let's write the earlier result like this, for the sake of illustration:

000 006.060 126 000 +/- 0.000 5

The leading zeros are insignificant, in that dropping them doesn't affect the value. Ditto for the trailing zeros. And the "126" portion is also insignificant, in that it's below the "certainty threshold" we're specifying. The remaining figures are the significant ones, and counting how many of them there are is a useful shorthand for the value's precision. "6.06" has 3 sigfigs, "6.060" has 4, which is why they don't mean quite the same thing (in this context, this is a convention that need not apply in others) — onomatomanic

Oh! I see. Is the following correct then?

For F = ma (Newton's force formula)

A) If m = 2 and a = 3, F = 2 × 3 = 6

B) If m = 2.1 and a = 3.1, F = 2.1 × 3.1 = 6.5 [ I dropped the 1 after 5]

My precision in B is greater than my precision in A.

If so, my question is does Newton's and Einstein's theories differ in this respect? Put differently, is Newton's theory less precise than Einstein's?

I think the answer to the above question is "yes". If Newton had very precise measurements of mass and distance, he would've realized, given his genius, immediately that his formula $F = G\frac{m_1m_2}{r^2}$ was wrong, way off the mark as it were as demonstrated by Einstein. In short, Newton was working with poor quality measurements with fewer significant digits.

The relevant point is that the output is never going to be more precise than the inputs. — onomatomanic

Why?

sigfigs — onomatomanic

Give me a crash course on signficant figures.

Conspiracy theory? Old wine in a new bottle.

See :point:

Maya (/ˈmɑːjə/; Devanagari: माया, IAST: māyā), literally "illusion" or "magic", has multiple meanings in Indian philosophies depending on the context. In later Vedic texts, Māyā connotes a "magic show, an illusion where things appear to be present but are not what they seem." — Maya(Wikipedia)

The evil demon, also known as Descartes' demon, malicious demon and evil genius, is an epistemological concept that features prominently in Cartesian philosophy. In the first of his 1641 Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes imagines that an evil demon, of "utmost power and cunning has employed all his energies in order to deceive me." This evil demon is imagined to present a complete illusion of an external world, so that Descartes can say, "I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgement. I shall consider myself as not having hands or eyes, or flesh, or blood or senses, but as falsely believing that I have all these things." — Deus deceptor (Wikipedia)

The Matrix Film Series

The simulation hypothesis is a proposal regarding the nature of existence which posits that all of existence is an artificial simulation, such as a computer simulation. Some versions rely on the development of a simulated reality, a proposed technology that would be able to convince its inhabitants that the simulation was "real". — Simulation Hypothesis

Stop embarrassing yourself, Fool. Until you actually read at the first two works on the list I've given you, it's a waste of time for anyone to engage you on a philosopher about whom you're profoundly
ignorant. :yawn: — 180 Proof

:blush: :grin:

Dlxt kmqt tsr!

That said, there is a certain interpretation of Wittgenstein I've warmed up to viz. philosophy, all discourse in fact, is simply symbolic manipulation, including but not limited to logic reminiscent of Searle's Chinese Room. Nobody understands a word they're saying is my point à la Wittgenstein's ladder.
— TheMadFool
To be kind, even charitable, the technical term (Thanks, Harry F.) for this "interpretation" is bullshit. :zip: — 180 Proof

:lol: Hi there 180 Proof. I just thought I might as well take the linguistic turn Wittgenstein initiated a long time ago to its logical conclusion - philosophy, every and all discourse, is, at the end of the day, simply language minus the semantics i.e. symbols (letters/words), synatax, overlaid with additional rules like, inter alia, logic. This is the apotheosis of Wittgensteinian philosophy and come to think of it, it is bullshit and Wittgenstein concurs :point:

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them—as steps—to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)

He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Münchhausen Trilemma/Agrippan Trilemma

I suppose I can lend my support to the OP, as best as I can that is.

1. Not everything is a cause. I once tried lifting a large rock and try as I might, the rock just wouldn't budge. Another time I pushed hard against a brick wall and then too the wall simply stood there without moving even an inch. Put differently, not everything has an effect or, more to the point, some things are not things that have effects.

Use a Venn diagram to get a clearer picture. Don't use the premise everything has a cause because that's a petitio principii.
Ergo,

2. It is possible some things are uncaused (Room enough for a first cause an uncaused cause)

Causal chains in the web of causation have dead ends - energy, as per thermodynamics, dissipates into unusable heat. Ergo, if science is correct, the universe should, at some point, come to a grinding halt - a car whose fuel guage reads empty slowly comes to a stop. Ergo, no causal loops possible.

Newton's gravity was even more precise than GR. It made a very precise prediction about Mercury. But Mercury replied not precisely. — Verdi

:lol: Good one!

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.
— Cromwell

And indeed My Lord Kelvin was mistaken. Not only were there many, many new things to be discovered (Radioactivity, relativity, a slew of new elements and subatomic particles, quarks and their properties, superconductivity, semiconductors, etc, etc) , but one of the discoveries (quantum mechanics) was that nature itself is imprecise. — unenlightened

:up: What do you mean by "nature itself is imprecise" vis-à-vis QM? There's wiggle room at the bottom but not so much up here at human scales? Do you have or is there an explanation for this seemingly odd fact?

Are you perchance referring to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle which states, thoroughly confirmed by experimental findings, that more precise the measurement of one of either the position or the momentum of a particle, the more imprecise the value obtained for the other?

Interestingly, if we ignore received wisdom on the matter which claims there really is no workaround for Heiseberg's uncertainty principle, wouldn't what I said in the OP entail that a better, brand-new theory could, somehow, solve the problem?

Shooting in the dark here, kindly excuse my ignorance on questions as profound as this.

Precision =/= Accuracy. As applied to a theory, precision is how specific the predictions of the theory are. Newtonian mechanics is about as precise as can be: its practical precision is limited only by the precision of calculations, which, ideally, can be extended indefinitely. Special and General theories of relativity are just as precise as Newtonian mechanics. But the latter yield more accurate predictions in some cases. Contrast that to, say, Aristotelian physics, which, apart from being less accurate, was also less precise in that it didn't yield such specific predictions about the motions of bodies as did Newtonian and relativistic physics. — SophistiCat

There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement. — Lord Kelvin (26 June 1824 – 17 December 1907)

Either you're mistaken or Lord Kelvin is talking out of his hat.

By the way what's the difference between precision and accuracy?

I remember a darts analogy in a biochemistry book I read long ago.

Accuracy: How close your darts are to the bullseye? How close to the true value your calculations/measurements are?

Precision: How close your darts are to each other? I suppose clustering of the darts would mean high precision. Basically, your calculations spit out numbers/values that, well, huddle together, are in a bunch.

So, your stance is that we revise theories in order to attain greater accuracy but not precision?

Put simply, Newton's classical formula for gravity is less accurate than Eistein's relativistic formula for the same. How come though that Newton's formula and Einstein's formula differ only in the number of decimal places (precision) at nonrelativistic speeds? They both do hit the bullseye (equally accurate).

Well said! The complexity we're faced with boggles the mind. Reminds me of Kurt Gödel's incompleteness theorems. As we make our concepts more and more exact, we need more and more sophisticated theories and, just guessing here, this process may go on ad infinitum.


:ok:

No. The relevance of precision in this case is that precise measurement of Mercury's orbit showed that Newton's theory was not imprecise but wrong — T Clark

I believe such black and white, binary, thinking, although apt on certain occasions, more obfuscates than clarifies. I remember reading that Newton's formulas are precise enough for space exploration. That's a big nod of approval - a lot is at stake and even one tiny error could jeopardize enitre missions.

In addition, one possibility that bothers me and can't be ruled out is another planet with an orbit within that of Mercury's that could explain why Newton's theory can't account for Mercury's behavior - something similar happened with Uranus and Neptune (got that from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson). I'm, of course, ignoring the other experiments that confirm Einstein's theory of relativity.