Death_By_Pod

I only like giving and receiving gifts when they are unwarranted. Christmas and Birthday gifts are more about an obligation rather then a celebration, who cares about gifts when all that matters is that a person showed up to exchange them in the first place. I prefer gifts to be little surprises which are actually meaningful (for example getting sold out concert tickets for a friend's favorite band).

Forum powered by burning dead bodies, Admin's kill a kitten for every post? Forums are a means of communication, either you like the people or you don't; if you don't enjoy posting or reading the forums fair enough. I don't see how the forums could be involved in something so reprehensible that it would make people leave (unless it was some crazy scenario like what I first mentioned). And remember that it's the off-topic forum of a video game fan site, I don't see how people can get worked up over something so insignificant.

Why not, If God is all powerful then it should be able to exhibit hate.

Do you want to promote him to admin or take him to prom? Internets, serious business.

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What if there is a giant unicorn which waves its horn around. When it does, nuggets of universes appear and we are only one of them .

Because some of us, unlike you, have imaginations and look for more in life than physics equations. What's wrong with being practical? I would rather spend my life doing achievable things and know I can fulfil them rather then wishing what could be; why can't I question its value? I think Earth and its beauty is vivid enough without having to introduce more then what there is. If I was all about physics equations, then I would give you some speculative theory then the truth; Someone's being a bit grumpy. For the sake of the thread, there probably is no hard edge, whatever that means.

We can't even see everything in the universe so why worry about something so silly as an edge.

This is what your original post said: The point is that you had not provided any passages which are simple, literal scientific predictions (something like ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâ¦Ã¢â¬ÅThe universe expandedÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬ÃâÃ

I see that the person you have quoted has a bit of selective reading going on, not to mention a few things are factually incorrect. Blood was identified as being an important part of maintaining health, as one of the four humours; which was developed by the Greeks around 400 BC. In order to maintain balance between the four humours, blood letting was a common practice. I wouldnÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t be so sure that they thought air was weightless. Air was one of the 5 classical elements and was designated as an octagonal particle by Plato. It wouldnÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t make much sense that such physical particles would be weightless. Actually this is answered below, but IÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢ll state it here. In the bible Darkness was considered a form of light (lesser light). This passage isnÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t so much about travelling light as it is about where greater light comes from and where does lesser light go in the presence of greater light. I think the reader is interpreting something that they want, rather then whatÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s actually written. Even IF scientists thought that wind blew in straight lines (I guess they didnÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t see whirlwinds much), which I guess was derived from the knowledge of trade winds; you can still produce a circular flow by straight lines. If you keep walking in a straight line you will eventually get back to where you started from, due to the curvature of the Earth straight line motion will form a circle. Another big no-no is the myth that people believed that the Earth was flat; certainly some people held that belief at some point in time, however this belief ended much earlier then people commonly expect (around the medieval times). Eratosthenes even calculated the circumference of the Earth hundreds of years before Christ. How did Jeremiah know that the number of stars was closer to a billion? It states that the stars of the sky can not be counted, however there is nothing physically stopping us from counting stars. HereÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s my interpretation of the scientific thinking, adopted in the first bit of the bible. Genesis 1: 6And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. 7And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. God created a large celestial sphere which separates water from outside of the sphere with from the water on Earth. Sometimes when the windows are opened on the sphere water flows through them and causes the rain. 11And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. 15And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. Light required for plant life? Not in GodÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s world. 14And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: The lights in the heavens are used for signs, a glowing endorsement of astrology. 16And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. Wait night is lesser light? Failure to comprehend that night is a lack of light. 17And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, He put stars in the sphere to give us light, not even God could suspend the stars in the sky. 26And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. We have dominion over apex predators like sharks and grizzly bears? 29And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. I donÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t think I would like to use poisonous plants for meat, something tells me that it wouldnÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢t end too well. 30And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. All animals were herbivores? I wonder what the mosquito had before it settled for a tasty meal of blood. 31And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day. So the whole ecosystem with the death, pain and suffering; predators/prey, parasites and disease was good? Ok... Not to mention this was all done in a record breaking 6 days. There you have it Genesis 1 in all its scientific glory, some head start. Seriously why did you make that post? All it really shows is how willing you are to eat up whatÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ã¢ââ¬Å¾Ã¢s been told to you. A bit of research would show how poor the arguments the quoted source put forth. Better to be completely ignorant I guess.

All the energy in the universe would not get you past the speed of light. You can approach the speed of light; however the closer to the speed of light you get, the greater the percentage of energy you put into accelerating yourself would be converted directly into mass.

Blastocysts, where embryonic stem cells are extracted from are very different from our bundle of cells. In the case of humans (and foetuses) the cells have been differentiated into specific cell types, whereas in blastocysts the cells are undifferentiated. To say that we are just a bundle of cells in comparison to a blastocyst is much more misleading.

Alchemy and Astrology did not yield any useful theories, however their practice did lead to the important disciplines of chemistry and astronomy. Stem cell research is what around 40 years old? Don't you think you are calling this a little too early, after all it took around 90 years for chemistry to come up with the periodic table. Why do you place so much emphasis on medical treatment as being the purpose of stem cell research. It is just as important to gain a scientific understanding of stem cells in order to further our understanding of human biology, then it is to produce a medical treatment. There is no reason why an archaic view of reproduction should be the cause to abandon the search for a broader understanding of nature. Especially when there is absolutely no tangible benefit to be had in abandoning stem cell research.

From your frame of reference ;) From the available data, which could be wrong for all we know. And as history tells us, will be one wrong theory in a long line of wrong theories. You can't even begin to "refute" a theory yourself. You are not a scientist, and they are MUCH smarter than you. What you "think" virtually means *nothing*. I've seen nothing here to even begin to refute Dark Matter. You're all going on and on about how you can't see it, or something. So? You can't see Black Holes, either, but we know them to be factual. You see them by looking at the radiation and whatnot that they emit. They are saying that Dark Matter apparently emits nothing to view, so it's a theory on why some things have more mass than they should. Is it wrong because it makes no sense to you? =; The Pessimistic Meta Induction is a pretty solid argument for why a scientific theory can never be right. The following paragraph is taken from wikipedia (cause I'm too lazy to write it out on my own) "In the philosophy of science, the pessimistic induction, also known as the pessimistic meta-induction, is an argument against the truth, or even approximate truth, of our present scientific theories. The argument is that because past theories (for example Newtonian mechanics) which were very successful (enabled us to make accurate predications, seemed to explain many puzzling phenomena etc.) turned out to be radically false we should therefore expect that present science, despite its apparent success, will turn out to be radically false as well." I'm not saying that Dark Matter theory is wrong, I'm just saying that its only as good as our ability to gather and interpret data. The theory makes complete sense to me and is in fact pretty common sense. Most stars are dwarf stars (80-90%), which are too dim to be detected; therefore basing the mass of a galaxy from visible stars alone is rather short sighted. But you just implied right and wrong don't exist. Why are you using that word now? That doesn't mean I can't use the words right or wrong (or make absolute statements), it just means that that I'm not asserting something as absolutely right or absolutely wrong.

From your frame of reference ;) From the available data, which could be wrong for all we know. And as history tells us, will be one wrong theory in a long line of wrong theories.

There is no single definition of the word 'truth'. It's pretty silly to argue for a truth (an objective fact) when there isn't an absolute frame of reference of in which to validate a truth. Of course this means that science can't attain the truth and there is nothing wrong with that. Oh yeah this is a subject about Scientists making up the idea of Dark Matter, which has been refuted on the first page.

Did you even read that site? It explains what dark matter is and observational evidence for it. It also links to the address below which is a press release from NASA stating that they directly observed dark matter (unless you believe NASA lies): http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/aug/HQ_06297_CHANDRA_Dark_Matter.html You fail at reading comprehension and trolling.

Currently: Sarah Silverman There are too many good comedians out there to have a favourite, it's too hard to find all the qualities of what you consider the best comedian in a single person.

I don't know how many times I've seen someone make an outlandish claim without providing any form reasoning for it. I agree that the idea that having formal rules is stupid for a forum; however I expect when you have the burden of proof, to actually provide proof.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

That is not equality, it is an artificial restriction on gender. There are many weaker men that wouldn't, or barely be able to compete with women based on strength. Why is it ok for a strong woman to try out for a men's baseball team but not ok for a weak man to try out for a women's baseball team? The distinction between teams you are using is gender based, not strength based. This is a case of males being discriminated against (for once); If a woman is skilled enough to compete with males then it should be encouraged however someone who is less skilled shouldn't have to be excluded due to gender. While I support gender equality and accept that women are discriminated against the most, you must remember that equality goes both ways.

There are practically infinitely many religions so I fail to see how you can logically reason between them. What I'm trying to get at is that religion is in the same class as other supernatural things, such as gravity being a repulsive force rather then an attractive one and as such it viewed as sceptically as you would ghosts, neon coloured zebra or repulsive gravity. With your example of a flying God, how would it be possible to tell that it is manipulating the laws of physics rather then actually obeying the laws and our models just being incorrect? If we can recreate a model which explains how it can fly then we have shown the God to obey the laws of physics so it wouldn't be a miracle. To say that we wouldn't know how the God managed to fly is like saying we don't know why all the water particles in the ocean are moving around in the way that they are. Small perturbations in every day living cause massively divergent effects. A counterargument to that would be the miraculous healing of diseases. There are many situations where people who are unlikely to live, manage to make recoveries which are attributed to miracles. These situations show us that we don't understand diseases and that they are more complex then we think. We need to revise our model of the disease in order to account for these miraculous healing. By the same token there are some models which are very good at explaining a disease. For example there are no reported miracles where someone has regained function in a limb that was destroyed by flesh eating bacteria or similar scenarios. There are many unsolved problems which don't require us to fall back to a supernatural explanation; it just requires more work to come to an explanation. You can't say something exists outside of the set of all things natural, since existence is a property exclusive of natural things. If something doesn't exist it means we haven't observed it, which means its not natural.

So religion is nonsensical since it can't be proven; someone wake up the pope. I'd like to know how you can discover things of the supernatural. The term discovery is pretty naturalistic; you can only discover what you observe and what you observe is that of nature. I don't understand the reasoning behind the idea that belief in something that is supernatural is valid or a reasonable thing to do. If you wanted to make a set of everything we observe in the universe and put it into a set, then everything outside of that set is not natural. Why would some things not in the natural set be more plausible then others? Why would religion be more valid then gravity repelling matter, zebra with neon pink and blue stripes and matter travelling faster then the speed of light? The fact that one of the most basic premises in religion is that concepts like god are unobservable, means that it is impossible for religion to be in the set of all natural things. Whereas my propositions above might be possible but they are yet unobserved. If anything a pink and blue zebra would be more valid since it is actually possible to observe a zebra. In your last sentence you are making a connection between something being physical and something existing. If something exists then it is able to be observed and hence it's physical. If something doesn't exist then it can't be observed and hence it is supernatural; it is a simple dichotomy to understand. If something supernatural existed you must have observed it in some manner, if you observed it then its natural and not supernatural.

Except that scenario wouldn't make sense since the universe is accelerating outwards. In a Bang-Crunch scenario: the universe would bang, expansion would decelerate outwards, stop and then start to accelerate inwards. It doesn't at any time accelerate outwards. There would probably be a way to account for the acceleration but so far it seems like a dead end.

The act of abortion is to induce a miscarriage, the difference between regular abortion and spontaneous abortion is whether it is voluntary or not whether a miscarriage occurs or not. Of course spontaneous abortion occurs more often then not through natural means, 30% of all conceived ova end in spontaneous abortion in the first month or two (without the mother even knowing, so how on earth can she be scarred for life). However non-natural means still cause spontaneous abortion. Around 5-10% of women are physically abused during pregnancy and these things do cause things like miscarriage and still born babies. You would be mad to say none of this abuse was non-intentional. A similar thing could be said about people who take drugs or are obese, some people might not know the consequences; however many people do and continue to purposefully endanger the foetuses life when the simple option is not to drink, do drugs and to be more careful with your weight for 9 short months. Many cases might not be intentional however if you want an abortion and you don't want to do it at the clinic (in order to save face, religious reasons etc.), poisoning your child or falling down the stairs might be your answer. Closing down abortion clinics and harassing patients of the few clinics remaining isn't going to help the situation. If someone wants an abortion they are going to do it even if they need to cause spontaneous abortion rather then going to a clinic. Yep and the other half of the opinion is that ends are justified no matter the means. There is no reason why one should be any more valid then the other. Making a law or a judgement which can drastically affect people's lives due to such an opinion, is quite an injustice to the many people who don't hold that opinion.