zapatos

Can you explain what you mean by that? This is specifically what I was thinking of. As far as we know, life blinks in and out of existence on various planets because they regularly run out of resources to sustain life. This may be the norm and we may be the exception. I don't think we can assume that life elsewhere behaves as it does here. And now I'm getting well outside my comfort zone, but isn't it also possible that a simple life form could exist using very simple building blocks, and that those simple building blocks could be returned to the environment using, say, weathering or chemical processes? If so, that would result in a sustainable situation where resources are not depleted. I agree that complexity makes life without food chains more difficult, but again, I believe that without sustainability it is certainly possible. And I don't know that other processes couldn't break down the resources locked up in the living body.

I've never before heard anyone claim they know a 'fact' about extraterrestrial life. I don't at all see how we must accept it.

Wow. I am so disillusioned with my country right now.

Ah, thank you. Non-technical use of technical terms seems to get me every time.

Terminal velocity of a man in free fall, head down, is something like 200 mph near the surface of the earth. Radius of the earth is something less than 4000 miles. Why wouldn't it take a man about 20 hours to fall to the center of the earth?

There are usually many more volunteers than there are volunteer openings in a lab. Your best bet is with some sort of personal connection, either someone who knows them to put in a good word, or some way of getting in front of them. Email is unlikely to get any sort of response. You might want to try visiting the professor during open office hours and asking if you can just sit in on their lab meetings as a learning opportunity for you. Then make every one of them, pay attention, look for openings. If an opening does become available, who will they choose? The person who has been there every week, or one of the 30 people who sent emails?

I like it. Although instead of "questions they have to answer", you may want that to be "questions they have to attempt to answer", or "questions they have to address". Depending on where they are in their hypothesis they may not be in a postion to answer. And the stick could be, "if you make no attempt to answer the questions, the thread will be shut down".

Exactly. If two knowledgeable people are discussing a topic in a proper science forum they often tend to share a wealth of knowledge which, since it is understood between them, may not be spoken. If it's not mentioned, I might see them go from step 1 to step 3 not realizing they skipped step 2, which they may have skipped since it so obvious (to them). Because somone often has a principle wrong in the speculations forum, there tends to be a more detailed and complete description of what is wrong given by those who are correcting them. The details are not skipped since to correct the misunderstanding they must be complete. If you weed out the weak speculations, then you are back to knowledgeable people talking to each other. I'm sure it is better for them, but from my selfish perspective I probably learn more as the speculations get worse. Of course at some point even I just laugh at the very weak speculations and move on.

Speaking as someone who is comparatively light on science, I'd hate to see additional restrictions on speculations. Since there is so much that is often wrong or misunderstood in someone's pet theory, there are generally descriptions of scientific principles at a level and detail better appreciated by someone like me. In the scientific threads since people tend to be more knowledgeable I often miss much of what is being discussed. If you restrict content in speculations the overall quality may go up, but you probably will not have more good threads; you'll just lose the weak threads.

Inflation and expansion refer to two different things. Inflation refers to the rapid expansion of the universe very early in its history, while expansion refers to the increase of distance between super clusters in the universe over time. Inflation is no longer happening, expansion is happening now. It is thought that dark energy (DE) pervades all of space and attempts to increase the amount of space between objects. It tries to increase the space between the atoms in your body, the moon and the earth, the earth and the sun, etc. The force of DE is relatively weak. It tries to increase the space between stars in the galaxy, or galaxies in our supercluster, but it is not strong enough to overcome the strength of gravity between these relatively close objects. On the scale of distance between superclusters, it is strong enough to overcome gravity (because gravity loses strength over distance) and the space between superclusters increases. DE is causing an accelerated expansion.

zapatos is the Spanish version (plural) of my last name. I happened to be teaching myself some Spanish at the time so that I would have no trouble finding tequila y cerveza on an upcoming trip to Mexico. As far as I can remember my search was successful...

How about these? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_science

And of course slipping is completely understandable when under stress from somone who isn't playing fair. I've worked in customer service, and we defined stress as 'The body's reaction to the mind's decision not to choke the living shit out of some asshole who desperately needs it!'. Ok, I get it.

Are you suggesting that it is ok to be illogical if your opponent is illogical?

I am not arguing that your magical fairy is any less likely than God. I am suggesting that arguments made against religion are weaker and more fallacy laden than arguments against science. For example, you said: (my bold) I am guessing that you would be hard pressed to back up that claim, and I am also guessing that if you were on a science topic you would not have made such a bold statement. My point is that very logical people tend to be less logical when discussing religion. I am wondering why. Or based on some of the responses to this statement, I am wondering why it appears that way to me but not to others. This may be too much off topic, but it seemed to me to be at least part of the reason why it seems as if people sometimes don't get along. What I am bothered by is that you claim the old testament is completely wrong because there is conflict between the old and new testament. Was Newton wrong because of GR? If not, how is that different than this case? Is it because the testaments had the same author? If so, then would Newton's original theories have been wrong if he then developed GR? It's a sliding scale. Weak if it's only one line wrong. Strong if you could show why essentially the entire text is wrong.

I don't get that. If a crackpot shows up in Speculations the critics don't seem to lose their logic just because the crackpot is illogical. Why would logic get blurred by the critics just because the topic is religion and those arguing for it are illogical? Maybe 'An eye for an eye' is in conflict with 'turn the other cheek', but I don't see how that invalidates the whole testament. I'll accept it not being a logical fallacy, but it still feels weak to me.

Ok. So it sounds like if we don't have a good understanding of what we are arguing, and there are few facts to refer to, then no argument is going to be very satisfying. That makes sense. While I cannot prove you don't have a magical fairy in your pocket, I am certain that it can be logically argued that there is no reason for me to believe there is a magical fairy in your pocket. I think if you cannot make a logical argument that something is true, then rather than make an illogical argument, it would be better to make no argument at all.

At the risk of bringing down a reign of abuse on my head... I find it interesting. When discussing science, logical fallacies are consistently called out. People are very pedantic. Yet when it comes to criticizing religion the rules of argument seem to relax considerably. I think it only fair that criticism of the logic of theists be logical. The following are some examples of what I am talking about. Am I mistaken or does there seem to be a double standard? I'm happy for you to point out why I am wrong if I am. Maybe I'm just misunderstading. Ridicule? A real God? True Scotsman? How does God not alleviating suffering prove he does not exist? If you are confident he does not exist, then how can he be defined as evil or sadistic? Pot calling the kettle black? Strawman? Always? Is that a bit of an exaggeration? Strawman? Sorry if I called it a logical fallacy when it was not, or used the wrong name. I'm working on learning logic more formally but am relatively new at it. The arguments did seem weak though. Like I said, I'm happy to hear why I'm wrong. I'm not trying to stir things up, it just appears to me that a double standard is being followed.

I understand that DE had nothing to do with the beginning expansion of the universe, but I question your statement that DE currently has nothing to do with expansion. My understanding is that universal expansion was slowing down until about 5 billion years ago, at which point the expansion began accelerating. If without DE the expansion could have slowed and possibly reversed, then wouldn't it be true that DE is solely responsible for our current expansion (whether that expansion is accelerating or not)?

So in other words, you are saying PIPA sucks.

Maybe it is but what I'm mostly seeing is defintions like this: http://definitions.uslegal.com/a/animal-cruelty/ I don't know if feeding him peanut butter via your junk is either violence or neglect, however you may experience your own violence or neglect if anyone finds out you did it. And of course the definition of animal abuse can vary by state, so I wouldn't be surprised if in some places it is illegal.

What abuse did the animal suffer? Would it have been abuse to lick the peanut butter off a finger? Does the lickee have to enjoy it for it to be abuse? Would it have been abuse if a person licked it as opposed to an animal? You may not like it but I don't see how it rises to the level of abuse.

I think they could be possible. Just because something does not exist does not mean that it is impossible. It just didn't work out that way, probably because what it would take to make it happen is exceedingly unlikely.

Yes there are many laws of nature other than physics. The point I was trying to make was that everything starts with the laws of physics, and all other laws of nature derive from physics. Similarly there is the US Constitution and all other laws in the US, no matter how complex, must fit within the rules defined in the Constitution.