Death_By_Pod

Nope, ignored. It's like I don't exist. I guess this happens when people attempt to reconcile two contradicting views, you pick one idea and ignore the other. The very definition of irrational belief.

Explain this http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ ok, so it's a lot, lets start at one thing. Explain this one thing without resorting to macroevolution: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc ... troviruses It's pretty simple if a virus randomly inserts its DNA into the host, then all descendants of the host should have that virus DNA. The good thing about this is that it can be falsified pretty easily, unrelated species such as humans and dogs should not have the same randomly inserted virus DNA. The link also provides a diagram showing how humans evolved using this method. But hey like always, this is going to be ignored and the same old people are going to argue the same old things.

It's only speculation among Christians who cherry pick things which are reconcilable with their religious views. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ which provides a decent overview of all the types of evidence put forth for what you call macro-evolution. My personal favourite Endogenous Retroviruses, basically a virus randomly inserts its DNA into yours. This DNA is passed down from generation to generation and across species. Only species which are common will share the inserted DNA. I guess we need to wait before the sun dies to prove our theory of stellar evolution or that we need to wait for a flower to bloom before we can prove the plant's species. Ever heard of abductive reasoning or statistical analysis? Again http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ I can't seem to remember your response to this the last few times I've pointed it out to you.

Maybe I missed your point but to me God must correspond with the Bible as I believe it's his words. Even if you believe that the bible was divinely inspired you still must accept the limitations of the people who wrote the bible. Ideas such as evolution, DNA and many other concepts didn't exist. For all we know 'God creating man in his image' could be about biological evolution but was written with the mind of a person thousands of years ago, so the word evolution didn't exist. Perhaps a modern version of the bible would contain a passage like, 'God made man with the matter of the universe and the laws which govern them'. The universe itself was created by God, so in some respects it is his image and the matter and laws would also be his image since they are components of his universe.

Like any other statistical claim. It's a condition, it would be like calling something like depression a 'phase'. It isn't associated with a specific part of a persons development, the only statistically relevant part is that the mean age for this condition is around 16. To say that you will grow out of it, is to say that you will grow out of depression or trauma; some people will and others won't. It seems that it isn't causing the poster any impairment to functioning, so it shouldn't be a worry. It's just peeves me a little that people dismiss this as just some kid's ramblings, when it can be a legitimate problem. If someone posted that they haven't been able to sleep properly for months or that they were worried about binge eating and weight, you would identify these as being problems. Yet if someone feels disconnected from reality, it's obviously some emo kid after attention and that they will grow out of it.

I can't believe how many people can't differentiate between being suicidal and being apathetic and dissociative. I see a lot of people acting tough and saying to go kill yourself, but the matter of fact is that approximately half of you will experience this feeling in some capacity during your life. To blame this on age or being emo, is rather naive at best.

Edit: Woha, easy on the giving out of that kind of advice. ~Assassin Even if it was someone who has a problem which is treatable?

If this is just a 'what if' kind of thing, then sure most people experience this kind of thing growing up, it will pass like most things. If this kind of thinking prohibits you in any way then it's a problem best dealt with a doctor. Stop being blind and grow a new pair of eyes. Sometimes it isn't as easy as it seems. Or a person with a dissociative disorder you [bleep]ing moron. Let's go laugh at the cripples. If a kid comes up to you and genuinely says they are going to commit suicide, do you just pass it off as angst? The short-sightedness of some of you people.

So being ostracised from a community isn't a good enough reason for doing good? It works for the rest of the life on this Earth, why not us? Even on these forums you see it in action, people asking for advice on countless topics fearing the negative consequences if they don't make the right choice. If morals are absolute, then there would be no reason why some actions wouldn't have morals laws associated to them. What makes the action of murder any different to the action of eating meat or logging forests? People pass judgement over these actions regardless of whether you say a moral law is associated to an action or not. If your moral laws aren't associated with every action, then there isn't any way in knowing what actions have laws and which do not; it would be completely subjective. Gee you don't think that the same mechanisms for determining morality associated with lawless actions such as slaughtering animals for food couldn't be applied to law bound actions such as murder? If some morals are subjective what makes other morals magically objective and free from subjectivity; your stance is a contradiction. I guess cherry picking what you like and don't like is bound to cause such problems, Cognitive Dissonance for the win.

Sociological factors. If I kill someone, their friends and family aren't going to take it too kindly. There is nothing inherently wrong with killing a person, however that doesn't mean that other people will find it acceptable. If you are actually upset over a murder regardless of your social standing towards the victim, then you couldn't get anywhere in life; you would be permanently upset. People get killed all the time, it only matters to you when it is socially relevant. Some people find it wrong to eat animals, while others see it as a right of living; who's to say what's right? What do your real morals say on the eating of meat, the falling of trees for permanent residence, the removal of minerals from the ground, the dyeing of clothing or posting on the internet? To suggest that there is a real set of morals which govern the goodness of every action is absurd.

Specific quantitative example: a deuteron A deuteron is the nucleus of a deuterium atom, and consists of one proton and one neutron. The experimentally-measured masses of the constituents as free particles are: mproton = 1.007825 u (u is atomic mass unit) mneutron= 1.008665 u mproton + mneutron = 1.007825 + 1.008665 = 2.01649 u The mass of the deuteron (also an experimentally measured quantity) is: Atomic mass 2H = 2.014102 u The mass difference = 2.01649 - 2.014102 = 0.002388 u. Since the conversion between rest mass and energy is 931.494MeV/u, a deuteron's binding energy is calculated to be: 0.002388 ÃÆÃââââ‰â¬

If mass couldn't be converted into energy then conservation of energy would be violated by the fact you are producing energy from nuclear fusion (it should take energy to combine atoms together). If you add up the weight of all the matter before and after the reaction you will find a small difference, this is the energy emitted from a reaction. Is a banana an apple? After all they are both made out of the same matter. Mass is a form of energy.

Generally, the longer the half life, the safer the material is. If it takes a longer time to reduce the reactivity by half, then it must also mean that on average less radiation is being emitted. Fusion has been producing a net gain of energy for a while. The problem has been a lack of funding into scaling up the size of the reactions for practical use. It's taken the European Union, the United States, Japan and a bunch of other countries to fund one test reactor. For something so important, you would think that governments wouldn't scrounge for funding. The waste problem isn't so bad if governments allowed reprocessing of nuclear waste into useful by products. Also http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf103.html which lists a few points related to this. You use a power source like nuclear or solar to generate the energy required to power cars (hydrogen, electrical etc.). The problem is the technology and practicality of doing such a thing. It still puzzles me why we are using 100 year old technology which is extremely inefficient. Nuclear Fusion, look it up... You lose mass when fusing two elements to produce elements below iron, this lost mass is converted into energy.

So why make such a big deal about legalising illicit drugs, when just as many people would like open access to pharmaceutical drugs. I see it as a double standard to use personal freedom as an excuse for legalising illicit drugs yet giving a blind eye to the restrictions imposed on pharmaceuticals. I see it as a tough time convincing people that you shouldn't have to get a doctors advice before taking any medication, I don't see it as any different for any other drugs. Why should a doctor have to prescribe a drug with serious side effects such as psychosis, liver, kidney or lung damage, yet you propose to legalise illicit drugs with the exact same side effects. Sometimes people need to restrict liberties in order to protect them. How do you reconcile your right to personal liberty and your right to being informed without restricting either liberty? If you need to inform someone before letting them take a drug, then it really isn't freedom.

So it would entail that you support making prescription medicine available without a prescription, right? Why should you make it so easy to get things like LSD and not Lexapro and Xenical? Do you really think it's wise to allow people to take medication without the advice of a doctor? You can't have a one way street.

Phlogiston and ether explained oxidisation and EM-wave propagation; since they explained their related phenomena successfully you would suggest that phlogiston and ether were real. So what makes these ideas any different then ones from today, they were well informed theories which were ultimately shown to be wrong. If you want to read more on the subject http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/ provides a decent discussion on the issue with some of the more common objections to your viewpoint.

The amount of light per square metre is a constant, so this doesn't exactly hold. There physically isn't enough room in a suburban/residential environment (due to high population densities) to support the population's energy needs. Not to mention how polluting mass producing solar cells would be since its production is energy intensive (It takes a couple of years for a solar panel to produce enough energy to balance the energy used in production) and the process requires heavy metals (including toxic ones such as Cadmium).

The person had a 12 acre property and spent $500,000 on the project, this has absolutely no viability (no one has the space or money for such a system).

This is a legitimate question and it's not as simple as everyone in the thread is making out. There isn't a way to evaluate the truth of a theory, either a set of observations are consistent with a theory or they are not. Does it matter if the theory of atoms or electrons isn't real? Theories are tools to make predictions; its first priority is to explain what you observe and to do it accurately. If you get results, does the theory behind the results really matter?

It seems like your the one that has lost their abductive reasoning. Reason is why evolution is a much more reasonable theory, then any alternative. Using God for your gaps seems like disregarding reason to me. Joke post? I can't even begin to respond to this. Mr 'I've done 4 semesters of physics' and you don't know how a star forms? Seriously, do you even read what you copy and paste? Never read this? http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

What are the good old days? Early 1700's? The industrial revolution in the late 1700's is what brought the biggest change in technological conditions. Previous to that you were performing manual labour (usually starting as a child) doing tasks much more suited to machines.

Proof that it never existed? ~Defender~ Bill: "I think that some people have psychic powers." Jill: "What is your proof?" Bill: "No one has been able to prove that people do not have psychic powers." I don't think you get this 'burden of proof' concept.

If the child is under legal custody of their parents, then the parents should have the final say. A parent has to deal with the choices you make regardless of how independent you think you really are. If you live under your parents house then it would entail that you live by their rules. With that said, many parents irresponsibly abuse their legal authority. It's one thing to protect a child from harm, however it's another to try and protect a child from the world.

You ever heard of the advice that many people give to new university students? You should study something which you love, and for many people science is that thing. I know for certain that I wouldn't be doing a science degree if I didn't find it fulfilling, I didn't think you would be one to disagree with this point. Some people get fulfilment from stamp collecting and making model trains, does that affect the heart or the love of others? I wouldn't be surprised if they regretted not finishing their train models or stamp collections before they died either. I guess your ears just aren't open much.

Did Art Bell bring him up on his radio show again? I was interested in this story around 5 years ago, however since then many of his predictions are nowhere near accurate. Civil unrest in the 04 American elections, descending into civil war in 05? Olympics cancelled since 04; I guess winter 06 doesn't count right? Not only were his predictions wrong, his physics where off, badly. The most obvious error is the amount of gravitational bending the singularities in his time travelling car caused. For example the sun bends light around 0.0006 degrees, in the photo (he provided a photo of a person shining a laser in his car) the light bent almost perpendicularly. The gravity required would have been monstrous, more then enough to physically crush a human. It's funny to hear that he could have carried the singularities around, weighing about 200 pounds. Anyway it's one of those situations where you want to believe and at the time seemed believable, however in retrospect it's a pretty clear hoax.