gcol

What an enlightening thread! I thought that fishy squiggle on car bumpers was a warning, you know, "Keep your distance, dangerous piscene on board" But if anyone wants to take offence, how about me, a citizen of the British Isles, forced to kow-tow, kneel, stand, and generally show allegiance to a national flag composed entirely of various crosses in amusing arrangements. As a devout Agnostic, I protest most strongly at being constantly insulted by this symbol of the antithesis of all I hold logically self-evident. So stick your fish where the sun don't shine, it just smells like old fertiliser.

I don't think you are confused, but people who like it up the bum and think it perfectly natural to do so, will say you are as part of their defensive strategy. Ignore them, you know where they are coming from. It is fundamental, really.

That is not, to me, an intriguing question because it is a rather traditional philosophical and literary ploy, written usually by the old guy with the young guy sitting in awe and utter respect at at his feet and receiving words of ancient wisdom with gratitude. The hypothesis I presented was intended to illustrate rather the opposite, with the youth rather saying "thanks for the memories, grandad, move over, it's my turn now". I am a greybeard grandfather, and if even I can visualise the reality, there is hope for you all. The young need to learn a little patience. Difficult, I know, but the old order will pass.

Excerpts from a small piece by columnist Anjana Ahuja in The Times, Dec. 31st: ...."News of a credible, if somewhat cheerless, theory about how science advances. It is not through reason and rational debate that it creeps forward, but by death. Which, when you think about it, is rather obvious:youthful ideas march into established territory, to the dismay of the old guard. Rarely do the guardians of the status quo convert: they go to their graves sticking stubbornly to their beliefs.Only in their absence can fresh ideas bloom and take hold." This hypothesis from David Weintraub "Is Pluto a planet?", and David Schuster, reviewer, Sky And Telescope. There's more: ......."Would Galileo's inquisitors have later re-read his work, reconsidered and said "oh, of course, now I get it." Fat chance. She concludes with: "Thank goodness Einstein and Newton were separated by two centuries: otherwise who would have believed the crazy ideas of a self-taught patent clerk over those of a knighted genius, even though Einstein was right?" I think there is a grain of truth in there somewhere, something between new ideas require new generations, and eternal life is synonymous with stagnation.

"What is a "tinker's dam?"" A tinker's dam, the same as a tinker's cuss, are worthless by their commonality, and as unremarkable as the chastity of a eunuch.

But Glider was largely dismissive of Freud's relevance to modern psychiatry, consigning him to an historical sidenote. The question of judgemental classification still remains. It is in human nature to classify things, and the nature of things classified to protest and squeal at being, in their opinion, unjustly classified. I suggest that any system begins from an initially prejudiced point of view.

Although the original post seems to have been ruled out of order (censored?) There is, to me, an interesting basic question lurking there, i.e., what is the difference between a personality disorder and a mental illness. Perhaps though it is too close to home for some, touching on the differences between scientists and normal people. Scientists are not all mad, but some of them are arguably anally retentive. Then again, they can always work it out with pencil and paper. (joke)

The criticisms concerning safety are amusing. Most could be applied to bicycles also. If the jobsworth health and safety bureaucracy had been around a hundred years ago, bicycles would have been banned. I can think of a lot of other 'at-risk' modes of transport too, perhaps all of them. Get real, everybody.

Quite. Too many warnings can be bad for your health. I fell into the trap of using an imperfect metaphor to illustrate a point, whereupon the metaphor itself becomes the discussion, rather than the original point. Metaphors are illogical?

Is this not simply an example of where the actions of the observer affect the result? Advance publicity arousing broad public awareness of an approaching danger is surely no bad thing in principle. Sometimes admittedly it is grossly overdone, becoming a "crying wolf" media-hype scare story. I would rather have too many warnings than none at all. The warnings can precipitate beneficial pre-emptive actions that mitigate the danger or even prevent it entirely. If the scare story comes to nothing, who is to say whether the scare was false, or has been avoided by appropriate action? If while travelling you saw many warning signs saying "Caution, Extreme Danger Ahead" Would you not tend to seek an alternative route? If there were then no accidents because everyone avoided the danger, only a fool would say the warning signs were unecessary.

If it is a hospital department, it is Diagnostic (an adjective) imaging department. In the UK, at any rate.

From a somewhat superficial reading of the U.K. building regs pursuant to building a new house for myself, it seems that the country is divided into areas according to maximum expected wind speeds, which alters the way in which walls and roofs should be built (e.g. max. single thickness wall height with different buttress spacing). Existing walls can vary in wind resistance according to age and strength of morar joints. For wind strengths required to move or break objects and structures in the U.S., why not look at how tornado strength is judged in the absence of known wind speed data? The old and trusted Beaufort wind scale relied on such practical observations, and it was good enough to circumnavigate the world in wood and sail ships.

Seems a bit like being presented with a list of all the inmates in an asylum and being asked to chose one to be head nurse. No, wait, unfair to lunatics. Perhaps they just all seem like people I would put into a leaky lifeboat and send them off to row the Atlantic (but not towards England, please, we already have a surfeit of nutters).

Dont see the connection between asking the purpose of life, and defining it. Once a thing, animate or inanimate, comes into existence, it creates its own definition by its own nature. Its existence requires no purpose. It's just cause and effect.

This thread having got a bit heated, I revisited the OP to get a clue as to why. It poses two questions and one statement. The first question is not debatable as it stands, because it makes the assumption that we all hate religion, which is arguably untrue. I know no-one who professes hatred for religions. Distrust and wariness, possibly. The statement seems reasonably true. The second question is fair to ask as a general philosophy question. If I wanted to debate it though, in a reasonable and thoughtful way, I would go to a philosophy forum and not a science forum. So I dont see why all the fur and feathers began to fly.

Unmarried with no children, then!! (just joking, of course, I think...)

Why just two? consider an infinite number of parallel lines. Something has to give, somewhere... or perhaps spacetime is not curved.

Can't argue with that, but the minority I meant were the militant atheists.

SFN has become "the militant atheists platform"...... a perhaps understandable overreaction, surely? If there are such people, they appear to be a threatened minority. Why should they feel threatened. Could it be because the main aim of militant theists is to convert non-believers? It is surely normal behaviour for threatened minorities to join together as 'brothers in adversity'. Is there anyone who does not see the influence of religion in politics, philosophy, science and the human condition in general. Is it another 'truth which dare not speak its name'? If the merest mention of religious influence were to be censored from any discussion here, then perhaps the forum should be renamed homework help. To some people, politics has become a religion. Should that be a taboo subject also. Why is religion such a popular subject? Could it simply be that it is, as part of the great meaning of life, the universe and everything question, something that exercises the minds of most young and enquiring students. Should such healthy enquiry be actively discouraged? Granted, the normal social rules of politeness and consideration should be adhered to, and when breached, should be heavily quashed. Just how far should a broadminded, adult and far-reaching forum go in bending over backwards to protect the over-sensitivity of a minority. Perhaps their faith is not as strong as they maintain, and it might not stand in the cut and thrust of genuine two-way debate.

That is surely because many "official" scientists are religious, and they steer clear of arguing about things which are not scientifically provable. Personally, I am suspicious of the scientifc reasoning of religious scientists. I wonder if they have the courage of their scientific convictions.

Because some of them want to kill me to convert me. Can't think of a much better reason for them to be wrong than that. Same sort of example as vegans wanting to ban meat-eating, and cyclists wanting to ban cars, but taken to the nth degree. Think laterally, use your imagination, and many more examples will come to mind.

When a strong theist bombards me with fundie dogma, I automatically respond in kind as a strong atheist, because he pisses me off. If a moderate and reasonable theist engages in interesting discourse, I respond as a weak agnostic to keep it friendly. What I actually am is between me and my maker, whoever or whatever it is.

I have seen film footage of birds flipping upside-down deliberately to present their talons to an attack from above. Not sustainable flight, perhaps, but they seem quite adept at doing it when necessary.

From a letter to the editor of the Organ Transplant Market Review, June 2020: "Dear Sir, as chairman of the American Eunuchs society, may I say how encouraged we are by the phenomenal recent increase in our membership. We also note growing number of enquiries regarding the possibility of trading-in small appendages for larger ones. We have to point out the cost differential, larger ones being in short supply at the moment. Market forces will work themselves out, no doubt. We also note a similar increase in the number of proffessional athletes seeking heart and lung upgrades. Amusingly, some students are pressing for brain upgrades to be made compulsory for certain members of university faculties."

An interesting and informative post, thanks. More than enough to whet the appetite of the interested and curious layman. Don't be put off by the catalogue-friendly nitpicking of whatever arbitrary parameters define a planet. I prefer to categorise them by relation to bunches of bananas myself