zapatos

Seems like random is still not getting a straight answer. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-can-a-person-sur

I think iNow did a very good job of summarizing this thread. If I remember correctly I believe the majority of participants in this thread agreed that a subset of believers could be excuded from the deserving the title 'broken'. That includes people who do not have the maturity, training, education, etc., to think logically for themselves. An example being children who are told by their parents that God exists, much like they are told by their parents that Santa Claus exists. Once we moved past children the concensus rapidly evaporated. I would also like to point out that individually, there were participants in this thread whose view of the statement "People who believe in God are broken", ran from 'completely agree' to 'completely disagree', with plenty of positions in between. From my own perspective, I feel that in order to be considered 'broken' you must be unable or unwilling to critically contemplate god's existence. I feel there are many who are never challenged or bother to do so, even as adults. I used to believe that the US was primarily responsible for the downfall of Germany in WWII, mainly because that is how it was always presented to me as a kid. It wasn't until I started reading history on my own that I understood the impact of Russia on Germany's ability to fight. I don't feel I was 'broken' for my misguided belief prior to a more mature review of history.

Still sounds about right to you. Still sounds too broad of a statement to me. Absolutely. I probably got more out of this discussion than any other on this site. But I think new blood is required if it is to go much further. We beat this one into the ground. I wonder what the record is for most pages in a thread. This one must be near the record. And to think the OP started with three words. For the purposes of this thread, it was probably best that no serious attempt to define god was made.

I often use my back yard as a refrigerator, cooling down cooked food or bottles of beer before putting them in the refrigerator. (and no, I will not give you my address!)

It is a beautiful example of how evolution can develop a highly efficient parasitic lifecycle utilizing multiple hosts. Can you expand on this please? I don't understand why having no choice to give us a chance at life is better than making the decision to give us a chance at life.

This could be part of the issue. Regretting that you told people there isn't enough evidence to substantiate your claims makes you appear underhanded. Does this mean that next time you will continue to claim you are right even if you know you are wrong? If you win the argument by deceit, what is the benefit? Trying to paint yourself in a better light by the liberal use of adjectives and adverbs (admitting modestly..., spelling variants..., you fixate on trivial details..., was but a generalization..., etc.) is also unseemly. Is this another one of your "underahieving-internet-dweller generalization"'s?

It seems to me that you are following two different lines of thought at the same time. Your first question was "would I worship a creator of the universe if it's existence were proven?". You then proceeded to assign negative attributes to this newly proven god. So that is an easy one; it would be difficult to worship a god that did bad things. But what if this newly proven god was found to only have positive attributes. For example, what if he created the universe, to the best of his ability, to the detriment of his own existence, and did his best to shield us from harm, simply for altruistic reasons? At that point it is no longer difficult to worship him. Your second line of thought seems to be, how can you have a positive view of the creator based on what we know now, which is that there is disease, and that there is no proof of god. In this case, I believe it is how you look at things. You look at the bad, assume it was done to harm us, and conclude he cannot be worshipped. Others look at the good, assume it was done for our benefit, and conclude he can be worshipped. A simple answer to how you can worship a creator is easy. All you have to do is believe he exists, he gave us the heavens and earth, that all that happens to us is to our benefit whether we understand it or not, and that he would even sacrifice his son so that we may live forever. Sounds like a good guy to me. Again, I find that you do not understand the views of those who believe. A child is given a car by his parent. He is not grateful as the car breaks down occassionally, he can't always get where he wants to go, he has to pay for gas and repairs. Far from perfect. So what does he do? Assume the parent is purposely causing distress for him because the gift was not perfect, or assume the parent gave him a gift out of love and with the best of intentions? You seem to tend to assume the worst. Believers tend to assume the best. I also admire them. I find the laws of physics and the resultant universe rational and elegant. In fact, the only thing that ever causes me to question my atheistic views is this very point. It almost seems too inspiring to not have had a cause.

Well, sure they do. But you just stacked the deck against worshipping the god you described. You started out well enough just by asking "would I worship a creator of the universe if it's existence were proven?", but you then proceeded to make him someone people would not be comfortable worshipping, by giving him the attributes of a genetic-disease-creating hater. The fact that you find it difficult to understand how such religious concepts/ideas are so successful as memes stems from the fact that you do not understand that people who worship god generally do not view him in such a negative light.

It's a shame you are just waiting around with a chip on your shoulder instead of responding to the content in the link. It was a very good article. If you are confident that iNow's comments are wrong it should be easy enough to counter his evidence and arguments. Acknowledging that what you said is stupid does not excuse it, if you you knew it was stupid before you said it. A simple apology would probably have been more appropriate, and would have gone a long way to keep things civil.

You are right. There are two ways to judge the situation: superficially, or after sufficient effort has been applied. While the two judgements may turn out to be the same, it is only the one based on sufficient rigor that should be considered a reasonable judgement. I errred by making a judgement based on insufficient evidence.

According to this Newton said "I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses". Forgive me for paraphrasing. You are being obtuse. Chris was looking for understanding, not an actual 'clue'. Are you trying to confuse Chris more? Whose question are you providing a clue to? Chris did not ask how to link gravitation and time.

The employees are now unemployed. Unless their true objective was to shut down the company and join the ranks of those seeking work, then they look (in hindsight) silly. The past misdeeds of Hostess doesn't change that. If we are going to dig into their history before making pronouncements we may want to dig further than just the union's unbiased position on the matter.

So... Newton basically said 'I don't know why, and therefore choose not to give an answer'. And StrinJunky basically said 'It's hard to say why, and physics does not answer that kind of question well'. What exactly do you find so different about these answers?

I was wondering the same thing. I cannot yet tell if it was the union reps who misread the situation or if it was the rank and file. And while in hindsight the union seems silly for not heeding the warning from management, I believe management made the threat to liquidate once before and did not follow through. Sad day for everyone.

I thought StringJunky's comment was very good and relevant to the conversation. Perhaps Michel you should read his comment more carefully as he did not state that 'gravity is metaphysics', but that the "'is' and 'why'" of gravity is metaphysics. And given that your contribution to the thread consisted entirely of the word "time", you may want to be careful about throwing stones. You know, glass houses and all that.

Be gone.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply they were purposely putting it on floors, just that Moon's floor was in place long enough to pick up radium when it was still in use in the US. It is also interesting to note that the home was previously owned by a doctor, considering radium was used as a medical treatment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium The factory mentioned here is maybe 400-500 miles from Moon's home. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls

Certainly sounds like it could be radium. Right color, old floor, and was previously pretty common.

Yeah, I'd be interested in seeing that proof too.

You might want to try sauteing yellow squash with onions, garlic, and sweet peppers in olive oil, then stirring in stewed tomatos. Mmm Mmm Good!

As regards the first sentence of your post I would say:- Think very very hard as to why that picture represents that thing in you who refuses to debate and endlessly repeats himself. That thing is chasing you wherever you go. You must try to escape that thing. It is very ugly. As regards the second sentence of your post I would say: - You are welcome to your feelings.

I'd kind of like to see you prove it too.

Excuse me? You can't be serious.

Ok, one last question then. Given that you say... and... how do you feel comfortable making the following statement? As far as I can tell, you are saying that we don't know when alternatives can take over, we don't know when fossil fuels will run out, but everything is going to work out fine. My take on things is that not knowing when alternatives can take over, and not knowing when fossil fuels will run out, can only justify the statement that we don't know enough to make the claim that everything is going to work out fine.