John Cuthber

Is his wife still alive?

I studied for BA in chemistry (technically, I don't have a degree because I never went and collected it but I did the courses and passed all the exams.) I assure you there was a lot of maths and physics in it. You just can't really do chemistry without them. Also, "I don't want to do this physics (not that i don't like physics nor is it that i can't - just not interested in taking the classes)." suggests that you are not willing to put the effort in. You shouldn't get any degree without working for it and I doubt that you will. I'm not sure I'd want a pharmacist with that outlook.

I strongly suspect that, in general, once food has been chewed it's cool enough to eat without any problems. I also suspect that "an upset stomach" is the most common psychosomatic problem recorded/ repotrted.

Among the things it adds to the discussion is an example of the double think that religion forces people to engage in. You said "It was true at the time." that slavery was appropriate. I pointed out that wile people at that time may have believed it to be right, it wasn't actually right (in much the same way they once thought the world was flat- but they were wrong) You are muddling up two things The truth (slavery is wrong) and belief-in this case, what it says in the BIble (slavery is right). That's the sort of additional cognitive load you carry as a result of religion.

Well, it looks like I was right. You can't do what he said, i.e. " the velocity of galaxies and stars can be computed by just assuming an electron orbiting a proton" Even to get "close" you need to add all these data as well. "hubble=4.675e-17' Hubble constant rh=1.0973731e7' Rydberg constant plank=6.626e-34' Plank's constant c=3e8' Velocity of light in meters shell1v=2.188e6' Velocity of electron in shell 1 v1=shell1v*velfact' Modified velocity of electron in shell 1 m=.911e-30' Mass of an electron facte7=1e7' 10 to the 7th power facte9=1e9' 10 to the 9th power facte20=1e20' 10 to the 20th power" And adding things in randomly till they give the answer you were looking for is numerology, not science.

The answer to the question which forms the title of this thread is no. That's why there's a prize on offer.

Long ago, people thought that the world was flat and they thought it was right to keep slaves. T The world isn't flat. Slavery isn't right. They never were. The belief has changed (in spite of Christianity, I might add). The facts have not. (Don't bother arguing about when, or even if, ancient people thought that the world was flat- it's beside the point)

Happy to help. I remind you that you actually asked. Specifically you asked if this "you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you" was true. It's not.

That's because you haven't asked the questions that would rule them out.

I think it's an opportune moment to bring a little levity to the discussion, so here's a reminder of one of my favourite comedy films. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5IQnQhzMSI

Probably a few reactions but the easy one is this CO2 + 2 R-NH2 + H2O --> (RHN3)2 CO3 I.e. the reaction to give the carbonate. The bicarbonate is also a possibility if there's a lot of CO2 and I wouldn't rule out the formation of carbamates http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbamate

Indeed, and this one isn't "mine". However a thread where only one person posted would be a bit silly wouldn't it? So, what exactly was your point?

If it's more ridiculous than magic, you should stop relying on a God that must have done it. Your thread was closed because it was redundant. The other thread (in which you posted quite recently) is still open and is a better place to discuss the failures of the fine tuning argument. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/69816-the-fine-tuning-argument-is-dead/page-2

A man who says that "fine tuning is simply a scientific fact" is not someone in a position to criticise other for use of metaphor. "We don't mean the worldwide web when we are talking about life... LOL" Nobody said that we did, so what, exactly, are you laughing about? He has, I suspect deliberately, missed the point. If the universe were different then life would be different. It's amusing to contemplate a comparable universe to our own where some guy is on you tube saying "We know that you can't make life out of carbon" because, in their universe, you can't. He would have fallen into the same trap of assuming that "ours" is the only way to do it. And, if he also forgot (or ignored) the fact that you can change more than one parameter at a time, then he would be a fool or a liar.

You keep missing the point and I think it's deliberate, but here we go again "Like the video said, the universe can't cause itself," Yes the video says that. Saying something doesn't make it true- not even if you put it on youtube. Do you accept that? Also As has been pointed out, you have not sensibly addressed the problem that I can equally well say " the universe God can't cause itself," And it is every bit as valid as the assertion about the universe. (please don't waste time with Bible quotes or special pleading here- they are logical fallacies and just make you look silly) So the important difference is that we have evidence of the universe but no evidence of God. Also you seem not to have understood the multivariate analysis you need to do, so you say "for example, the strong nuclear force were 1-2% stronger than it is, diprotons would be stable and hydrogen would fuse into them instead of deuterium and helium." without adding unless the electrostatic force were a bit bigger- in which case they would behave in much the same way as they do in this universe and we wouldn't know any different.. But, anyway, it would be better if you left that argument in the thread about the "fine tuned" universe (which isn't really very finely tuned at all when you remember that you can change more than one parameter at a time)

Then you are not in this universe, but in the other 50% of cases, you are a winner. That's the point. The "fine tuning" argument said that you couldn't change anything without killing the universe. However, you can change things if you change more than one thing at at time. Re " He even admits his "oversimplification" " ​Anyone who doesn't admit it's a simplification is kidding themselves or lying to their audience.

In the presence of strong acid (H2SO4 or others) the phenylethylamine will not absorb CO2. So counting the CO2 absorbed on it will be pointless (you will get little or none).

Can we , at least, sort out the slavery thing. Yes, slavery was common at the time. It was also profoundly wrong at the time. Normal doesn't mean good. So, a Bible which advocated it was morally wrong. The proper way to deal with slaves isn't to treat them slightly better than other slave owners. The proper way to deal with them is to free them. So, the answer to you question "Are you really saying that wasn't a truth at the time?" is a very resounding no. It wasn't true that you should take and keep slaves then (the details don't matter) This "you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you" is not true. You shouldn't take pagans as slaves. Nor is this true. "Then, too, it is out of the sons of the sojourners who live as aliens among you that you may gain acquisition, and out of their families who are with you, whom they will have produced in your land; they also may become your possession" .You shouldn't take immigrants or travellers as slaves. Your question was "Are you really saying that wasn't a truth at the time?" It wasn't true then: it isn't true now. Are you not ashamed of yourself for asking?

It gives you the right answer. Imagine you are making a car. You change just one thing- say using metric thread nuts, rather than imperial and it doesn't work. You conclude- wrongly, that it's impossible to use metric threads. But multivariate analysis lets you change more than one thing at a time. You change the nuts, but it also lets you change the bolts. So, if you pick randomly for metric or imperial for both buts and bolts you get a 50% change of getting the same thread- and it works. Now consider all the bits of a car. You can't generally swap parts from a a Ford to a Volkswagen so uo would say that it's only possible to build the Ford. You would clearly be wrong. Changing more than one parameter at a time lets the effects cancel out. It shows that the universe may be "finely tuned" but lots of other universes also would be.

"The Bible both says God is beyond time" That's special pleading. It's a logical fallacy. I could equally well say that "the universe is a special case- the need for creation doesn't apply to it". Also, you have yet to answer the point about the observed reality of things popping in and out of existence. There's evidence for that- but none for God.

There isn't enough information to answer the question.

About 1 minute and 5 seconds it it tacitly asserts that things don't just come into existence- because if they did, we would notice them. This fails to take account of the facts that Things do just pop into existence and we do observe them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_effect Just plain wrong.

I ate part of a banana which I knew wasn't ripe. It wasn't very nice. Rather than accept that I made an error of judgement in eating it, I am going to make up some unreasonable tale where the shopkeeper (or whoever) did something which would be technically very difficult and which would mean that they got a bad reputation and lost sales. WTF?

Religion certainly isn't based on facts so it seems reasonable to say it's based on dogma: what else? Who told you that scientists get used to the marvels of the Universe? That's the sort of thing we are talking about- it's one of the entries in the dodgy accounts book. To me, no religious belief could be as profoundly marvellous as the observation that apparently, if you get a lot of hydrogen and wait 13 billion years, it starts to wonder where it came from. Why do you think I'm getting science from any religious /cultural anthology? They certainly wrote "the truth as they saw it" but they were blinded to the fact that they were quite often very wrong. (I'm not talking about minor glitches here, but about things like where to get your slaves, and the "proper" way to keep them). They made those mistakes because they failed to test their ideas (and indeed forbade such testing "Test not thy God").

Sorry, but I'm sure I read somewhere that one should not bear false witness- that is one ought not say that one witnessed someone doing or saying something unless they did. Now I didn't actually say "My knowledge may be poor, but I don't propose to seek to improve it" I said "I don't propose to seek to improve it by looking at a site written by just one side of the debate." So, you are not only wrong by the standards of the site in that you keep derailing the thread (OK I might be helping you do that), but you are wrong by your own standards. (And now to get back to the thread before the mods shout at me). Surely the fact that you are prepared to break your own faith's rules to deny science means that there is a real dilemma and that trying to serve both sides of that divide must be a greater strain on mental resources than, for example, my perspective where I only have to be consistent. It seems to me to be like the dodgy bookkeeping where you have two sets of records- the correct ones you use to run the business, and the bent ones you show to the auditors. I only need to stick to one consistent story- the one backed by scientific evidence. Surely, to keep the faith, you need to deal with two sets of records. One says the the Earth stays still and the other says that the Sun and Earth both move as they orbit their combined centre of gravity. How can it not be easier to just have one consistent story (which sometimes admits it doesn't know; yet), rather than to have two- where one has several hundred documented contradictions?