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(For illustrative purposes only -- Don't really know you so I'm just picking a topic. Could be any subject you believe but do not have first hand experience with.) Do you believe in DNA, that it exists, that it is responsible for traits and how people develop? (Hoping the answer is yes.) Have you ever worked with DNA, helped map a genome, done cloning, worked in a microbiology lab? (Hoping the answer is no.) What is your evidence of its existence? Because someone else said so? Do you have faith in those strangers who write papers or talk online regarding the subject? So even though you lack the evidence, you have faith that it is true. Does that feel like pure fiction to you? Do you feel like you are fabricating a belief? Is it that much of a stretch for you to be allowed your faith in what strangers are telling you is true, but not to understand how someone can have faith in God?

I must have missed it. What is Zarnaxus' final test of the "Australia hypothesis"? Seeing it from space and actually being threre were not enough for him to be 100% certain. It sounds to me like he believes he can never be 100% certain. Someone who believes in God can make up for the lack of evidence with faith. Zarnaxus has enough evidence for Australia's existence, yet uses faith in the slim possibility of "The entire world is a conspiracy against you, making you believe that Australia exists!!" to maintain his bit of doubt. While their respective faiths may cover different amounts of evidence territory, I don't see much difference between the two. One doubts with evidence; one believes without evidence.

It seems to me that you should have directed these comments toward Zarnaxus. He is the one who doesn't seem to have complete faith that Australia truly exists. I do have complete faith it exists. I am questioning his logic in doubting the existence of something so clearly defined, and at the same time not understanding how someone else's logic can lead them to believe in God. Seems to me to be opposite sides of the same coin. One is unsure of some existence despite the evidence, the other is sure of some existence despite the lack of evidence.

I was responding to your question, "you seem to know alot, who is this "someone"?".

Do you believe Australia exists? I mean, maybe not 100%, but enough so that you believe it is probably so? Confident enough that you would buy a plane ticket, board the plane, and put your life at risk, since if it is not there you are going to have to land in the middle of the ocean? Will you act out your life as if it exists, talking about Sydney without a smirk on your face, believing people when they tell you they've seen koalas and kangaroos on their vacation to Australia? Would you be willing to bet all your worldly possessions that it exists? I'll take a chance that the answer to these questions is yes. So how can you have so much faith in the existence in a hunk of rock you've never seen, yet find it so incomprehensible that someone else can have the same faith that God exists?

Wait, did you say you did this in outer space?

Try looking in the link you provided.

The dead person and their dead relatives don't care. The further in time you move from when the person died, the less the opinion of their decendants (or others with a vested interest) matters. The less effort the relatives (or others with a vested interest) put into caring for the remains, in other words if they effectively abandoned the remains, the less their opinion matters. Any display of remains should be respectful. From my perspective the decision on whether or not (and how) to display remains should in large part be based on the above.

Yes, I'm sure you must be right. http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/8100000/Sarcasm-the-big-bang-theory-8135257-500-281.jpg

Click on the down arrow next to your name in the upper right hand corner of the screen to get the drop down. Choose 'My Content'. You can also find it by choosing 'Find My Content' on your profile page. Now that you have a post you ought to be able to find it.

I don't yet understand this very well, but it seems it is not uncommon for people who lose their vision to hallucinate. It seems that the brain expects visual input to process, and if it doesn't get that visual data it makes something up. I'm wondering if the process of dreaming is any way related. The brain receives data all day long and then that input is suddenly shut off. Is it possible the brain is inventing data in a similar fashion to the way it is invented for people who have lost their vision?

My mother has been going blind over the past two years due to problems associated with age and diabetes. She is completely blind in one eye, and within the past couple of weeks her vision sometimes drops to almost zero in the other eye. She now has regular hallucinations, usually of people, little girls in particular, as well as flowers and other things she is familiar with. Doesn't matter if her eyes are open or closed. The hallucinations of the little girls are particularly vivid. She can tell me what they are doing, what they are wearing, and they often come up and pat her on her hand. She cannot feel the hand patting or hear them; only the visual hallucination. She is well aware that they are hallucinations although sometimes it takes her a while to figure it out if the person seems to fit in with her environment, such as seeing someone walking down the same hall she is in. The other day when we were talking she suddenly said "This is really wild! I wish you could see this." She was watching two girls playing. Has anyone had any similar experience or been around someone who has been through this? Can we expect this to fade over time? Any likelihood she might have disturbing hallucinations associated with blindness? We knew this could occur but didn't realize the extent, and I would like to hear anything anyone has to say. Thanks.

I work with a person who finds that nearly everyone she has to work with is basically a total jerk. She is always amazed that so many people can be like that. Interestingly enough no one else from work seemes to have problems with any of the others at work. They only have difficulties with her. It's interesting that even though she is the common denominator, it never occurs to her that perhaps the problem may be with her, and not all of them.

Maybe it is just me but I find your regular denigration of Christians to be rather pointless. And now you are moving on to native Americans. I'm curious as to why so many of your posts follow in this vein.

If the Federal Government passes a law and it is not struck down, then under the Constitution it is valid for them to be in that business. Doesn't matter if you or I think so or not. The Slippery Slope is a fallacy in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the event in question. In most cases, there are a series of steps or gradations between one event and the one in question and no reason is given as to why the intervening steps or gradations will simply be bypassed. This "argument" has the following form: Event X has occurred (or will or might occur). Therefore event Y will inevitably happen. This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because there is no reason to believe that one event must inevitably follow from another without an argument for such a claim. This is especially clear in cases in which there is a significant number of steps or gradations between one event and another. http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/slippery-slope.html

I hear people complain about the cfl legislation and wonder why this relatively minor requirement bothers people so much. The poor legislators have voters yelling in one ear about the need to reduce our dependence on foreign energy, and when they do something to reduce the energy needs of the country, they have voters yelling in their other ear about how they don't want to have to give up their light bulbs. Too many people want the government to take care of our country's problems, but only so long as it doesn't affect them personally. If the government cannot even implement a change that the voter does not find 'objectionable' because it is such a massive imposition on his right to choose, what chance do we have to tackle the really big problems?

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/tepco-finally-seeks-outside-help-pot-calls-kettle-radioactive-government-says-not-trust-gree

It seems to me to be a matter of degree. Very few people act like Fred Phelps or shooters of abortion doctors. And when they do they are roundly condemned by nearly everyone in the organization they belong to. Thus people don't tend to correlate the actions of these to the organization they belong to. There are relatively more people who are willing to strap on explosives and give their lives while invoking the name of their god because they believe their religion tells them it is just. If someone burns a bible I don't necessarily expect that someone will die because of it, but if a church in Florida burns a Koran I feel confident that people will soon die. If someone writes a book critical of Islam I expect that person has just put their life at risk. When I hear of a man killing his daughter because she shamed the family, I am not surprised if it turns out he is Muslim. At one end of the spectrum you have people like Phelps. Generally people will not criticize the Baptist religion because one person who is Baptist takes an extreme view of that religion. On the other end of the spectrum you have people like the Neo Nazi National Alliance. Almost everyone will agree their group is linked to anti-semitism. And as you move from one end of the spectrum to the other, you move from finding no links to the organization to feeling there is a link with the organization. I think Islam falls somewhere between the two extremes. Not enough extremists to feel the religion is violent; not few enough extremists to feel the extremists in no way represent the organization; but enough extremists to feel there is some connection between the extremists and the organization. Another example is unions in the US. If I said unions are historically supporters of Democrats, I think that is about right and I wouldn't hear too many objections. But of course not all unions or their members supports Democrats, but enough of them do to let people make that connection. And I think that is what has happened with Islam. Enough violence takes place in the name of Islam for people to start making a connection between the extremists and the religion. Not really accurate and not fair to those who are not extremists, but what are you going to do? That is going to be the perception of many.

I probably would have been better off saying "if some portion of the religion and spiritual leaders support violence then I would say Islam and violence are linked in those particular cases whether anyone decides they should commit violence or not". That would have prevented any confusion about my point of view, which I agree is important when discussing these types of issues. It would have been less important if I had been talking about baseball. It wouldn't have mattered as much if I said 'The Yankees had a bad season' instead of 'Some aspects of the Yankees season was bad'. Point taken. I'll try to be more precise next time.

I'm not sure in what way I have misrepresented the situation as I gave no percentages and didn't use words such as 'majority' and 'minority'. But anyway, maybe the question is not so much if people are motivated to commit acts of violence, but whether or not the religion supports acts of violence. Because if the religion and spiritual leaders support violence then I would say Islam and violence are linked whether anyone decides they should commit violence or not. Just like I'd say Nazism supports racism because that is what the leaders taught, whether or not it received much support from all those in the Nazi party. Your decision to think the worst of me given my history on this site is interesting. Given the following definition of 'many' I'm curious as to how you assumed I meant 'most' instead of definition 1. or 2. man·y (mn) adj. more (môr, mr), most (mst) 1. Being one of a large indefinite number; numerous: many a child; many another day. 2. Amounting to or consisting of a large indefinite number: many friends. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/many Unless it is because the first time I used the word 'some' I meant 'the minority of ', and the second time I used the word 'some' I meant 'the majority of'. The reason I thought I might be shot down in flames was not because I thought I was making inflammatory remarks, but because of the frequency of knee-jerk reactions to volatile subjects. It's like discussing religion and politics at a party. You almost always get a negative reaction from someone who uses their own feelings and biases to color your remarks.

To CP's point, what expertise do the plant operators have when dealing with problems that are more related to civil or hydraulic engineering, materials science, building a barrier in the ocean to limit distribution of radioactive waste in the ocean, etc.? It seems to me that the further the problem extends beyond the confines of the plant, the more the need for outside expertise.

At the risk of being shot down in flames... Why should we separate Islam from terrorism? It seems to me that many muslims are motivated to commit acts of violence by their religion and spiritual leaders. And if they are so motivated then why pretend they are not? Separating the two because some muslims are not motivated to commit acts of violence seems no more valid than connecting the two because some muslims are motivated to commit acts of violence. And the fact that others commit violence in the name of religion has nothing to do with the question of whether or not Islam is a cause of violence.

And they did say things like that. And talked about it. And analyzed it. And made a decision. That is risk assessment. Generally speaking risk assessment is: 1. Identify risks. 2. Determine the probability of a risk occurring. 3. Determine the impact if a risk occurs. 4. Based on the probability and impact assigned to a risk, decide how to mitigate the risk (which is basically reducing the probability and/or impact). 5. Repeat The mitigation is tricky since you have to consider so many competing factors, such as time, money, regulations, stockholders, current technology, etc. With unlimited resources they could have built a 100 foot high sea wall. But the consumers of the electricity would not have agreed to such a high electricity bill. So you do the best you can with the resources you have, and decide what level of risk you can accept. Same thing people do every day when they decide whether or not to eat fatty food, smoke, or drive to the store. Major difference is that someone building a nuclear plant will do a much better job of it.

In what way does plate tectonics lower the ocean level?

Those two statements sound mutually exclusive to me. Can you expand on this a bit?