Sisyphus

I don't mean specific to you. What I meant was the difference between "you will have a son" (very likely if you're trying to have children) and "you will have a son, and here is what he will look like as an adult." And I'm sure your son is wonderful, but "special" is vague enough to be meaningless, especially talking about a parents' opinions of their children.

Can you not own a business with paid employees that work for you voluntarily? Even if that business doesn't manufacture its own office supplies? And what do you mean by "direct economic purpose?" Why does the military exist, in your opinion? On one point, at least, we agree: talking about whether something is "socialist" is almost meaningless.

If we are part of the military because the military is part of the government and we are the government, then we'd also be part of "socialized" healthcare, which apparently means it couldn't be socialized. But that's a less bizarre assertion than that the military isn't a service, frankly. Because they are employees, not slaves? What?

Almost none of my dreams are mundane enough to come true, but there have been a few times in my life when I thought they had. For example, dreaming about a place I'd never been to, that then turned out to be just like the dream. However, memory of dreams is far less reliable than memory of waking events, and I was probably simply constructing the "memory" as I was remembering it, from a few fragments of dream. It was a lot like deja vu - everything felt familiar, and I felt like I knew what would happen next, but in retrospect it was just feeling on the verge of knowing what would happen next, but not actually predicting anything until it was already happening. Or sometimes it was somewhat predictive. But I have a lot of dreams every night. It would be weird if nothing that happened the next day ever reminded me of one of them, even closely (considering, again, that memories rebuild themselves every time you recall them, dream memories seemingly much more so). So, to summarize, I'm a relentless killjoy on the dream prophecy front. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Like what? Specific visions, or just general descriptions? Do you know what's happening next, or just recognize events as they're happening? Could any of it be self-fulfilling prophecy? What is supposed to happen next?

In order for something to be socialist, the workers have to be "federally produced?" Is that really the argument you're making, or have I misunderstood? No, we are not the military, unless we are all government, in which case we would be all socialist institutions also. The military has property, and it has employees that it pays, and both of these are funded by the government. I'm not in the military, but I do pay their salary (not that I have a choice in the matter). You're making a big deal out of the fact that the military purchases things from other entities (exclusively, in many cases). I'm wondering what the alternative is, there, and if such a thing is needed to be "socialist," whether, in your opinion, anything socialist has ever existed?

How do you figure? The military isn't providing me with tanks. It's killing people on my behalf, using tanks. It's called a service. Like the postal service is a service (delivering physical objects), and not a provider of little white trucks. What do punching with fists or "federal birthing tanks" have to do with anything? If something can't be socialist unless it's run by government test tube babies, then socialism has never existed in any form.

Newborns are definitely not self-sufficient (nor are much older children, for that matter), but they aren't directly, biologically linked in the same way once they've left the uterus and the umbilical cord is cut. Personally, I don't really like that as a criterion, though. I'm more interested in the being itself than its relationship to others. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged As I've said numerous times, what it comes down to is that the position is ultimately arbitrary. If you recognize this, you are necessarily going to be some form of "pro-choice," even if you personally would never have an abortion. If you don't think it's arbitrary, you could still be pro-choice if you think the objectively right answer allows for some forms of abortion. However, "pro-life" arguments necessarily have to insist on an objectively correct position, and so you're going to see a lot less "budging."

The "product" of the military is violence, not planes. Planes are just one of the tools they use. (And, incidentally, the government is "sole consumer" of many of those tools. Hmmm...)

You mean scrith. Building it out of scree doesn't make much sense. And technically they weren't rockets. They were giant ramjets, fueled by directed solar flares. So that's what we need.

Or to put it another way, it is captured if its velocity is less than escape velocity for that object. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_velocity That's assuming it doesn't collide. A collision at less than escape velocity is just an orbit that intersects with the surface of the orbitted object.

Is there an alternative?

@Dak: See, now that's an actual answer. Saying that you're an atheist "because gods don't exist" is just saying that you're an atheist because you are.

It is true that there are many online forums where one can discuss religious matters, and that this is a science forum, dedicated to a completely different type of discussion. However, I still think there is value in a religion forum in which all the participants are self-selected members of a science forum. Religion is not science, but this forum will still (for the most part) have a common ground of an interest in and respect for science, which I think can lead to a different flavor of discussion than what one encounters on general religion forums.

This is actually a fair point. I'll bring it up. We're not aiming for a "grand scale," though. Conversations don't have to end all religious strife to be productive or interesting.

This isn't supposed to be a debate, it's supposed to be a discussion. The topic isn't "prove that gods don't exist," it's "why are you an atheist?" (I agree that "because gods don't exist" is not a helpful answer.) And people do change their minds. If you took a survey of religious beliefs today, and religious beliefs 1000 years ago, the results would be very different. Granted, most of that change has probably been through the old dying and the young forming initial opinions different from their parents, but that doesn't mean that once an opinion is formed it can't change or at least evolve. Mine have.

How many photons get reflected off the wheel of a car? Of that number, what proportion make it into the collector of a telescope of 1 light year away? (Each square meter of collector would receive about 1/1.15*10^32 of the photons from a source 1 light year distant.) How far away are these hypothetical observers?

Figure what out? "Person" is human-defined. It's not something that is "discovered." Definitions can only be consistent or contradictory. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged You prevent it from becoming a person, I would say. What? Why would you suggest that? If you're being sarcastic I can't tell, so please don't.

This is more true than you realize. These days there are literally more fictional murders in New York on tv shows than actual murders, per year.

I don't understand this analogy. You destroy what you destroy. You prevent everything that might have happened after that. What?

It is true that death is hard to define, though. Death is a process, not an event, and the criteria for calling someone "dead" are varied.

I live in New York and I've never been assaulted like that here.

Surely we can be more pedantic than that. Doesn't anyone want to talk about reference frames or something? Solar flares?

The bones of huge dinosaurs are proportionally thicker than ours, and they themselves would have been weaker than us relative to their size (though still much stronger in absolute terms, obviously). Just like an elephant, really, only moreso.

There are lots of ways of being dead, just as there are lots of ways of a machine being broken. What's the difference between a working computer and a nonworking one? Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes it isn't (except that one works and one doesn't).

I can't tell what this argument is about. Twinkling is caused by the atmosphere. Sure. Is the claim that stars are invisible without the distortion of the atmosphere? Because that is simply not true. Astronauts can see the stars, as long as their eyes aren't adjusted for brighter lights, just like on the ground. So basically if anything lit by sunlight is in view, or even if cabin lights are on (just like looking out the window of a well-lit house at night), you can't see anything. The Apollo astronauts couldn't see stars from the moon because it was daytime. The cameras couldn't see them because their exposures were too short, because it was too bright. Or is it something else?