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I never said it stemmed from atheism, so my argument is intact. Here are your biases coming into play again. That statement is simply not true. First of all, they do not 'all conform to a belief system'. Five minutes of conversation with a couple of Catholics will tell you that. Second, your statement that a person who is religious cannot/does not base their decision on 'individually formed rationales' is not only wrong, but terribly insulting. The simple fact that people change their view of religion over time, or have doubts, or disagree on whether or not the bible is the literal word of God, should be proof enough. The religious DO NOT put themselves in a group of people who believe based on 'blind and sheer belief, based on nothing other than their gut...opposed to individually formed rationales".

I tend to believe that atheists have biases in exactly the same way religious people do. That is, they develop a belief system over time, and that belief system colors their view of the world. People cannot help but to be influenced by what they believe. For example, you believe that atheist beliefs vary greatly from one atheist to the next (I agree). Yet your biases tell you that just because people share religion that their beliefs do not vary greatly from one to the other (couldn't disagree more) and that they conform to that belief system blindly (I have yet to meet two Catholics who agree on all aspects of Catholicism). You'd do well to stop referring to 'the religious' as some sort of collective group. They vary by particular belief system, as well as by individuals within the belief system. 'Religious' includes many types of people, including those who have no more in common than belief in a deity.

I don't want to speak for anyone, but possibly because it sounded a lot like you were ranting.

Sorry I wasn't more clear on my intention. Yes, it is my position that religion has some imperative to dictate what people should think. Religion tells us what to think about life, death, sex, eating, drinking, worship, fear, science, and nearly all aspects of our lives. Punishment for not believing runs the gamut from verbal harassment to death in this life, or suffering to eternal damnation in the next.

Religion

"Nobody has ever seen a situation from the past…" I think you could argue that EVERYTHING we see is from the past, as we don't see it until sometime after the event occurred. The further away the event occurs, the further in the past it is by the time we see it. To use a simple example, observing a supernova is observing an event that happened possibly millions of years ago.

No Freudian slip. That is what I meant. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Missouri_School_of_Medicine

At a local medical school the students in large part teach themselves. A group of about a dozen students and one instructor meet daily. The students are given a medical case and told they must diagnose and suggest a treatment. The students take turns researching symptoms, tests, treatments, etc. and present them to fellow students. As the days go on the students get to request specific tests be performed and they are presented with the test results. The role of the instructor is (among other things) to ensure what they are being told is accurate, and to ensure the students are not wasting their time working too far toward a dead end. This has proven to be a very effective method for them. The students not only feel the need to do well for their own sake, but the expectations of the group as a whole drives them to perform well, as the other students are dependent on your research and understanding of the topic you are assigned to investigate. The success of this method is shown by the high success rate when the students take their licensing exams.

'I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.' --- Yogi Berra

So using the example of a prism, it appears as if light enters one side of the prism, is absorbed/emitted many times, and exits the other side of the prism. When a photon is emitted, is it essentially emitted traveling in the same direction as the photon that was previously absorbed? Or is it emitted in some random direction, and what I interpret as light entering one side of the prism and exiting the other, is in reality simply some of the photons making it all the way through, while others head off in other directions?

A People's History of the United States - Howard Zinn Seems to be the version of United States history that is not taught to grade school children since it doesn't cast us in the best light.

Remember that whether something is alive or dead, a plant or animal, a planet or planetoid, these are simply categories invented by humans to organize our thoughts. Not everything we find in nature falls neatly into one of the categories we have created. 'Killing a virus' does not necessarily imply the virus was 'alive'. I can also kill an idea or kill someone's career. http://serc.carleton.edu/microbelife/yellowstone/viruslive.html

Join a local Toastmasters club. http://www.toastmasters.org

I think it's a great analogy. There is a lot of confusion about how the gravity of a black hole really affects those things around it. The only part I'm not sure about is when you said 'without the mass to beat it'. The way I always thought of it was that as you approached the event horizon, the only way to avoid crossing over was if you had sufficient velocity. Even two black holes will combine if their velocity does not allow them to pass by or orbit each other.

I don't think pedophiles are necessarily attracted to the church. From what I can find the church has a similar ratio of child molesters to that of the general population. I think there is just more focus on the church due to the fact that they are a church, and that the church conducted a cover up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sex_abuse_cases http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedophilia

A friend of by brother's was called 'dirt'. It was short for 'dog dirt', and he got the name because failed to bathe on a regular basis.

When I was in high school I jokingly called a friend Pugsley (character on The Addams Family). Being socially consious she quickly grabbed my arm and said "Knock it off! Names like that stick!". To this day, people are still calling her Pugsley. And she is in her 50s. And she is still mad at me.

Nothing that is above the surface of the sun will notice if the sun turns into a black hole. On the other hand, if a comet comes along and passes closer to the black hole than what was previously the surface of the sun, the comet will experience a stronger gravitational field.

Gravity increases as you get nearer the center of mass. On the surface of the sun you will feel the greatest gravitational pull. If you move as far from the sun as the earth is, the gravity will be less because you are further from the center of mass. If you burrow into the sun, the gravity will be less because now some of the mass is over you head. But if the sun shrinks, then you can still be on the surface, but also get closer to the center of mass. The gravity doesn't increase if it turns into a black hole. It increases if you get closer to the center of mass. A black hole is just so small that you can get VERY close to its center of mass.

If the sun turned into a black hole as you said in your original post, then the mass would remain the same. If it the same mass, it is the same gravitational pull. That is why there would be no impact on the earth. Yes, he was right.

At earth's current distance the earth will continue to orbit. Doesn't matter if the sun turns into a black hole or if the diameter increased 10 fold. The gravitational pull on earth will remain the same.

Light that is within the event horizon of the black hole cannot escape. The event horizon would be near what is now the center of the sun. The extreme gravity of a black hole is not experienced until you are very near it.

Wow! Outstanding in every way. Thanks for posting!

If you are going to silence half the word for censorship, wouldn't it make more sense to silence the word 'ass' and say the word 'hole'?

The word 'asshole' is often censored on television by silencing half the word. I find it funny that they let the word 'ass' be said but silence the word 'hole'.