John Cuthber

No. Goedel showed that some things are not provable. However the irrationality of pi is not one of those things. Read the proofs.

The other ingredients may well be more toxic than the fluoride- simply because there's a lot more of them present.

Recursion seems to have muddled up science with sitting round trying to calculate, from pure logic, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

Logical deduction- which is the only sort of logic that's going to get anywhere starts with axioms or facts. You seem to have come to the conclusion that atheists are illogical. Please let us know what are your axioms and what logical steps you are taking to get from those to the conclusion. that's the "meat". This "There is no salad in that, I use words very accurately, and without any fluff. If there is the perception of that, then there is specific understood ambiguity and you'll have to be more specific in order to identify what your concern is." on the other hand, is, at best, "salad". (It's also factually incorrect- as detailed elsewhere- but that's not the point here.)

If #1 of those was true then then all slaughter-men would be vegetarian. Do you think that's credible? There's something called "organic meat" because you can fool some of the people all of the time, and sell meat at an eve higher premium. Meat production is generally seen as reource intensive- and for the most part it is. There's no denying the wastefulness of most meat production. But I live in the North of England; it's cold and wet and so the only thing that grows well is grass. I can't eat grass- but sheep can, and I can eat mutton. So, sometimes, the best use of resources is to eat meat (and / or dairy produce).

I guess it won't be long before his preachy style and refusal to provide any evidence gets him banned.

I may get shot by the analogy police for this but... Before the IUPAC* came to be, chemicals had names. The names were derived from all sorts of things- properties of the substance- glycols , for example, got their name from the fact that they are sweet (glycos is the Greek for sweet) and picric acid similarly got its name from the Greek word for bitter. Some got names after plants - oxalic acid from Oxalis- the sorrel plant. Others from planets Plutonium and Uranium, for example. One guy actually managed to sneak his own name onto an element: Gallium. As far as I can tell, that's roughly where we are with naming government bodies and officials. Incidentally, I am a government official and my "title" is that I'm a "Higher Scientific Officer". As far as I can tell, that's pretty much meaningless unless you know the "rules". *International union of pure and applied chemists- for those who don't know.

I think we should have a vote on that. However the thing you have missed is not that I'm unable to see that mankind may, in the future, be able to feed a star. I'm reasonably well acquainted with stellar physics. The thing that you have failed to see is that it would be a bloody stupid way to go about things. It would be easier to move people to a less clapped out star. But beyond that you remain wrong because of the laws of thermodynamics. I didn't say it's impossible because I don't know how to do it, I said it's impossible because, at a pinch, I can show where someone proved it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_theorem Do you not see that, by assuming that you know all about it (and that you know how much or how little I know), you have made yourself look dafter still?

Lets be clear about this. You said "("It is a technical existence of a form of logic" and that doesn't make sense in English. Also, this "Your first statement is a bit erroneous to what I had said and in no way has God been defined in this discussion as "an invisible friend,..." Doesn't make sense. You cant be "erroneous to" something in that way. I'm guessing that English isn't your first language or that you are not as well schooled in it as you think. Anyway, my first statement was "... yet you seem to believe in an invisible friend." And you do seem to do so. So, the statement is perfectly correct. I'm entitled to describe God as your invisible friend if I like. Are you saying that He's not your friend, or that He's not invisible? I agree that you didn't try to provide evidence. Nice of you to admit it. However the forum's rules require you to do so. In the end, if you don't you will probably end up barred from the site. We know what a tautology is. The point is that you can't use it as the basis for anything because that's a logical fallacy. So you can say "Thus, if the word of God is true, then the truth is the word of God." if you wish, but it doesn't prove anything,so there's no point saying it. if you rely on it as evidence then you are creating a circular argument. And that's what you did (tacitly) when you followed it with "The truth comes from an internal deduction of factuality or falsehood, and that truth, which is reached upon sincerely avoiding logical error, is then the word of God. You may notice the truth is consistent and not fleeting. It is immutable and eternal." As I said, that's a logical fallacy. If you can't do better than that, perhaps you should just stop.

For the most part, it's obvious. For example, (In the UK) there's a Department for Work and Pensions, because it's a fairly large chunk of what the government does. (Obviously the government has lots of jobs to do and it splits them up into slices. That department is headed by a secretary of state- his title is the Minister for Work and Pensions. Within the departments are ministers. There are sometimes junior ministers who deal with parts of departments. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_for_Work_and_Pensions#Ministers and their titles all stem from what they do. Most of the names of these roles are historic- "Ombudsman" is, I believe, one of the relatively few words in English derived directly from the Icelandic. Some of these names go in and out of fashion- the word "Czar" was in vogue recently- so we have a "Drug Czar" which seems mildly absurd to me. So, as far as I can tell, if they need a new "someone to look into" something new (well newish- governments are generally slow)- say broadband speeds they will appoint a commission who will ask interested parties to put their views forward and they will decide on what,if any, level of government action is needed. If it's a relatively small thing, it's probably more or less already within the remit of one of the government Departments. Every now and then the Prime minister gets his knickers in a twist with one of the ministers. so he abolishes the department- thereby leaving the minister without a job. IIRC John Major did that to Michael Portillo- the "employment department group" ceased to exist. It didn't make much real difference- the various people who were actually doing the work were transferred to other departments. This article calls it a "promotion" that's not how it looked at the time. http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1955&dat=19950704&id=G1ExAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AKIFAAAAIBAJ&pg=5744,2196284

No it's not. If you can't answer the question "whence came God?" then you have a paradox. BTW, this "There is another valid possibility that still abides by the scientific idea of repeatability of specific events without variance. While much of science is concerned with tests, if there are events that happen without human evocation, then those, too, can be observed in the same way testable phenomena can be observed. Thus, understanding the fundamental principles of existence, which is primarily logic (and more often associated with computer science and engineering, as logic and intelligence as of the same topic), is also of the scientific method. However, to restrict your understanding to "what did the rock do when I threw it," you would have never solved much of anything. It requires logical deduction and there is a great deal of information available from what the average person knows and simply logic, so long as the logic is completely error-free. This principle of logical deduction, in fact, is how the vast majority of profound discovery happens (simply viewing data without understanding any of it cannot actually produce profound insight, just measurements). " is word salad. It has nothing to do with the issue, and (as far as it has any meaning) it's wrong You can't just sit there and deduce how the universe works- you need to make observations. This "simply viewing data without understanding any of it cannot actually produce profound insight," is particularly clearly wrong. It's common observation that people look at a problem till they "see" the solution. David is right: you are not fooling anyone.

Really? Also, I think that most people can recognise their pets- even within one breed of animal. I understand that farmers can recognise individuals among their herds too.

Do you have any idea how daft you look when you say that we can keep a star burning indefinitely?

Well, if it takes a few pages to show what you are on about, then start typing. Otherwise you can hardly legitimately complain when people point out that what you have said doesn't make a lot of sense. How can you claim that Christ influenced the development of mankind? As far as I can tell, none of his ideas were all that new.

OK,let's start with "Let's be 100% accurate. Science sees a connected story that suggests, with what we have observed, various things about the world. But, as you must understand, if you accept that as ultimate fact, you are the fool. In a hundred to a thousand years, we could very well leave the planet and change the apparent history and no monkey would be able to differentiate as we will have gone through that process already. So while science suggests something, we must always understand later evidence may revoke that suggestion." Imagine that some scientist somewhere had said that the earth is 6000 years old. Some other scientist would say that, if that were true, the record of tree rings couldn't go back further than 6000 years. But it does, so the assertion is clearly false. As you say, the evidence has revoked that suggestion. "It's been some time. I'll have to find the evolutionary rate and diversity through time charts. You're free to look them up and predict the rate of evolution. I think you'll find that it occurs much more quickly than the popular scientific consensus. " No, because, unlike religious mumbo jumbo, the scientific consensus will be based on evidence. So, if we look at the evidence, it will agree pretty well with that consensus. However, if you want to prove me wrong- show me the data. "If God created the universe and science seeks to understand everything about manifest reality, then yes, God is an important topic that science desperately sees to either explain or find an alternative to" Not really.Even if God exists then He is a liar; that's what the fossils prove. There's not much point trying to study a being whose always out to mislead you. if I want to know what the weather is like, I can ask God- who may lie to me- or I can look out of the window. Which is the better course of action if I wish to know whether to take an umbrella or not?

Re 1 He may be cynical, but more importantly, he's right. Your assertion " yes, everything you read is true if you only accept the truth and you do not accept a lie or falsehood as true. " simply isn't true. There are many counter example which prove this. So, having found that, at least, some of what you say isn't true, doesn't it make sense to stop reading at that point and explain to you that you are wrong? Re. 2 Indeed. So if you are looking for truth you are in the wrong place. However you will not find truth by making false statements like " yes, everything you read is true if you only accept the truth and you do not accept a lie or falsehood as true. "

You say "In reference to my statement that I believe things objectively, it is certainly true, at least to the point of maximal intention (human error aside). "yet you seem to believe in an invisible friend. Do you understand that your point of view is not internally consistent? Re. "Let's first understand the definition of evidence. Without looking it up, we understand that evidence is a form of clear objective support for a possibility to be true. This includes logic, as all appraisals are founded on error-free logic. Thus, to claim "there is no evidence" would be to suggest that with the entire capability of all human thought, no evidence can be found. A more accurate statement would be, "I have not perceived conclusive evidence," or perhaps "there is a possibility of evidence but it is pending social agreement."" OK, let's cut to the chase. You have provided no evidence. "I am aware of tautology. Tautology is actually not an insult, btw, it is a technical existence of a form of logic. However, what I stated was technically not tautology but instead a simple definition" No. What you did there is ,at best, a circular definition. It is meaningless because it's a logical fallacy. Nobody said it's an insult- so the logical fallacy you used there is the one referred to as a straw man. Do you realise that, if you can only "justify" your point of view by relying on logical fallacies, it's probably because your point of view is wrong?

Well, if it's a paradox then it kills theology just as well as it kills science. Or had you not realised that God can't have come from nothing?

Make sure the concrete is completely dry before you put any sort of covering/paint/resin on it. Also, when you have put the acrylic down; if they spill acid on it one of two things will happen. The acid will attack the resin and damage it or the acid will sit around on the resin until someone slips on it and falls into a puddle of acid or whatever. At the moment, the concrete is acting as a neutralising agent and it destroys the spilled acid. The acrylic won't do that. So you will need to make sure that there's always some way of cleaning up the acid before it corrodes something. Lots of water and a drain or maybe calcium carbonate (crushed limestone). Or, you could stop people spilling acid.

I'd like him to come back so he can correct the "quote".

The best answer, from a lot of points of view, is simple. Stop spilling acid.

Getting "the right proportions" is almost impossible. Exactly how much acid did they spill? However, using lots of baking soda or washing soda (which is a lot cheaper) will stop the acid damaging the concrete. You can always wash away the excess soda with water.

Fair point; someone gets shafted.

Do you realise that giving yourself laxatives isn't going to teach anyone anything and that giving them to someone else is almost certainly a criminal offence?

That suggests that you can't tell sex from politics.