Area54

Lighten up.

I have no opinion whatsoever as to whether or not Asperger's should be classified as a disability. I merely wished to point out that you had classified it as a disability, but claimed you had not set out to do so. That's sloppy writing. I'm enough of a pedant and an interfering bastard to call people out on such. Correcting people for flawed statement is very much relevant and on topic for any thread. Now let's move on.

Perhaps we should mark this day annually as the first time an important, but off topic issue was raised on an internet forum.

Mike, it might have been helpful if you had bothered to read the objections made at multiple times in this thread. I shall summarise the main one here. The definition of heirarchy you present is from the perspective of a human. A tiger, a cockroach, or a culture of Salmonella would have a different perspective. You have utterly failed to address that point so far. Plus, what Mootanman said while I was typing this.

I agree with everything Acme said in the prior post, but the moving of goalposts occured earlier. You were making assertions about Christians. Full Stop. Period. No qualifications. When I responded to that you suddenly switched to a subset - YECs. That is switching the goalposts. Please have the decency to admit you have done it. Now, frankly in one sense it does not matter to me if 140 million, or 123 million, or 2 million, or 20,000 people are so misinformed and misguided to reject all the evidence against a Young Earth. What matters to me is that anyone is so misinformed. And if I return to the original point that led to this unedifying tangent, the New Testament changes the whole picture for Christians, introducing a new perspective and approach and amending the significance of portions of the Old Testament. That means that your singleminded claims about the "hatred" of Christians is on decidedly weak ground. Contrary to the claims of some atheists, religion can and does evolve.

I never characterised it as a war crime. I responded to a specific post by DreamDoc where he stated " Indeed, the Vietnam conflict revealed multiple atrocities suffer by the innocent but none as vast and devastating as those suffered by Japanese citizens when our government dropped two atomic bombs on their country." In my post I proposed extending the characterisation of "multiple atrocities" to some of the conventional bombingcarried out by the Allies. I expressed no opinion as to whether or not these were war crimes, as to whether or not Allied officials should have been prosecuted, nor did I choose to comment on the inconsistencies of the Nuremberg trials. Your two posts on this matter appear to be based on a misunderstanding of what I was saying. I believe my position was clear in relation to Dream Doc's single post that I addressed. Perhaps you were associating me with a different position held, or thought to be held by Dream Doc.

It woudl probalby be more accurtae to say I tyepd it worng.

You may not have been seeking to classify it, but by describing it as a disability you did so classify it. That was unfortunate as it detracted from your more important point, to consider to what extent the behaviours that enable social interaction are instinctive.

For all his failings Reagan did contribute greatly to a reduction in nuclear arms. I don't see Trump achieving the same thing. If I am correct then an alternative to Trump, who sees nuclear arms as a serious problem and acts to attempt to reduce them further is a positive step. (But I refer you to all the limitations identified in my previous post as to why you should completely ignore my suggestions.)

You did move the goalposts? Do you deny this? I look things up when I have to. As demonstrated on earlier posts I had sufficient knowledge of the subject to come up with the number of YECs that was considerably closer to what may be the correct one than your quoted number. The point of this part of the discussion was to establish that you had posted inaccurate information. Thank you for conceding that. Unofrtunately, you followed up that concession with another inaccurate number. Do you want to try again and get it right this time?

That's pure word salad. I am looking for a serious discussion with you ,where you address the objections to your concept of heirarchy made by myself and other members on multiple occassions in this thread. I am not looking for you to simply repeat a load of New World mumbo-jumbo.

I am not a diplomat. I am not a historian. I am not a politician. I am not a person with influence. I am not a person with power. I am not exceptionally bright. Consequently I have next to no idea. I would suggest, as a small step forward, avoid electing Trump for a second term.

What about them? I wasn't discussing the immoral acts of the Japanese, or the Germans, or the Russians, or the Italians, but specifically those of the UK and the USA. These do not suddenly gain respectability because some other immoral act, by some other powee was overlooked. That is what you appear to be suggesting should be the case. I hope I am simply misinterpreting you.

But if they are in as Guests, that didn't make sense to me. One or two who haven't bothered to log on, yes, but a score or more all within two minutes, surely not. Puzzling.

Exploring the new forum layout I took a glance at the "Online Users" function. I was a little surprised by the result. Thirty users and their activities were displayed, covering "Just Now", "One Minute Ago" and "Two Minutes Ago". Of these thirty users only two were members. Myself and String Junky. Of the Guests, one was registering, two were looking at particular threads, but the remainder were all viewing profiles of members. None of the member names were ones that I recognised. This just seemed an odd and unexpected distribution of users. I wondered if this was some bot scanning user profiles looking for contact information, or whatever. Any thoughts. Am I just being paranoid? Are they still out to get me?

My understanding is that there are several genes which control skin colour. The wikipedia article provides an overview. We should also not overlook environmental factors. Perhaps Schrodinger didn't get out much.

Based upon my limited reading of the regular members of this forum very few of them have such a conflict. If we ignore the trolls and lunatics with their own "theories", the membership seems to be made up almost entirely of two kinds. The first sees no need for God and therfore find no conflict. The second have long reconciled their belief in god with their confidence in science, or - indeed never felt any conflict between the two in the first place. If you have contrary solid information please provide it. You will see I have underlined "solid". I mention that in order to underline it further. So you have now modified your stance that God is Higgs Bosons, to "God is the universe", which looks pretty much like the God of Einstein, not the personal god you think is readying herself to intervene in the affairs of men. Maybe it does (make for an incomplete understanding of reality), but that's not as bad as having an understanding of reality that is distorted and corrupted by nonsense. I notice you choose not to take up the challenge of defending your heirarchy concept properly.

Hello Mike, sorry for being direct, but that is just silly. Photons are also "everywhere" and so, apart from being a bit clumpy, is dark matter. And even more so dark energy. And even in intergalactic space there are plenty of protons hanging around. Maybe you need to follow the Hindu pantheon to allow for this multiplicity of possible gods. I've just noticed that two post backs you replied to one of your own posts and then in the subsequent post replied to that one. I thought this was a discussion forum, not a blog. Some might consider your approach a bit rude. Others might wonder if it is the only way you can get a conversation at your own level. I just think it is also silly. If you want a discussion, why don't you seriously address the challenge issued to you by several members that there is precious meaningful evidence for your claimed heirarchy. That heirarchy is only "shaping up" in your mind. Nowhere else. Are you up to the challenge? If so, let's hear no more about fishes, let's have a bread and butter approach.

I don't have much of a problem with people believing in God. I do have a problem with those who view him as a book publisher who only puts out a single volume that contains absolute truth.

I would extend this to the firebombing of all but five major Japanese cities, Dresden and the deliberate targeting of civilians by the RAF under Bomber Harris.

Alternatively it is a very good reason for universal nuclear disarmament.

It seems that you probably do understand compound interest. However, you do not understand economics. No shame there. That applies to 90% of economists. As an economy grows, the cost of most items or services come down in real terms. This is partly due to improved technology and partly to increased efficiency of operation and partly to factors of scale. (It's cheaper per item to make 10,000 items than 10). The cost of sailing to the Americas, per person, in the Mayflower was roughly the same in real terms as what it will cost to "sail" to Mars in 2050. Defer that for two hundred years to cover the paucity of resources on Mars compared with Virginia and the problem is solved.

Thank you for the data Acme. My own estimate, made without benefit of real data, but vague recollection of population numbers and reported YECs in polls, computed more with my gut than my head, was 95 million. The one thing I was sure of was that it was less than 140 million, hence my challenge. One might also consider the following. The poll would have been a poll of adults. If we assume - worst case - no one under the age of 15 was interviewed then the population sampled was 80% of the 325 million, i.e. roughly 260 million. 38% of that is 99 million, which is trending towards my gut wrenched number. Of course this is all incidental to your important point, describing the "still considerable, if not worrying, number". I tend to find the number terrifying. If it was down around 20 million it would be merely frightening. It would need to be less than 5 million for me, for it to be merely worrying. If it went above the 140 million itoero suspected I would lose control of my bowel movements. Thanks again for the data. Perhaps iotero will grace us with an acknowledgement of his error.

It turns out that astronomers have this one at least partly covered - struggle they may, but victorious they are. For example, from "The calcium isotopic anomaly in magnetic CP stars", Cowley and Hubrig: " Chemically peculiar stars in the magnetic sequence can show the same isotopic anomaly in calcium previously discovered for mercury-manganese stars in the non-magnetic sequence. In extreme cases, the dominant isotope is the exotic 48Ca. Measurements of Ca II lines arising from 3d-4p transitions reveal the anomaly by showing shifts up to 0.2 Å for the extreme cases - too large to be measurement errors."

The argument on panspermia as a process is different from what we are discussing here, which is whether vinyl cyanide membranes could offer protection in the interstellar medium. They wouldn't. Everything available on Earth for abiogenesis is not an argument against panspermia. Occam's razor is sometime necessarily blunt. Plus the one thing that may not be available on Earth is sufficient time.