John Cuthber

Hedonistic sex among the young always did "go a little too far". Buggery may have been taboo, but there was still plenty of it going on. It's probably not true that Churchill described naval tradition as "nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash" but he certainly could have said it. Leviticus didn't take the trouble to condemn a behaviour that didn't exist, nor was Queen Victoria called on to sign legislation concerning a non-existent practice.

It doesn't matter if they got their insight while visiting the bathroom and published it on toilet roll. If what they say is not supported by evidence and a logically valid argument, then it's bollocks.

What makes energy recovery so expensive is that you have to build a power station with the generators,transformers, cooling towers and so on. Did nobody read this bit of the article "What's more, it will generate enough renewable energy to power 25,000 homes, reducing our reliance on burning fossil fuels." Because Gloucestershire isn't very sunny.

Only on the Sabbath.

They are not talking about sewerage sludge. Also I rather doubt that they looked at the laws for a foreign country.

Sorry guys, when I said that the basis for believing it was the same was "dubious" I hadn't realised that people might not understand. Perhaps I should have said "on the dubious ridiculous basis that their reciprocals are the same".

As far as I know, "youth" always had a hedonistic attitude to sex (and to be fair, so did most of those who weren't so young)

A PhD in religion isn't something I'd consider relevant when looking at the validity of someone's point. I'd look at whether or not they constructed a valid argument backed by evidence.

And when you have spent you money on a waste recycling centre, what do you do with the un recyclable stuff? (especially since you now can't afford the incinerator?) It really does make sense to burn it and recover the energy (the energy recovery part is why it's expensive)

That clearly shows that majority of the atheists bayabists* are liars when they say that it is their very investigation of all of religion fruit is what has made them to hold an atheistic bayabist position, that's a lie, they have not studied all of religion fruit. No, its you guys who have the wrong notion of what being religious aware of the nature of fruit means and its you guys who have named an apple as a banana banana as an apple without seeing the obvious. * (bananas are yellow and bent ists- those who refuse to accept that the true banana is red round and a member of the rose group)

No, not really. Most of the UFO stuff is, of course, discredited. Much of it is misinterpretation too. The people may be mistaken or delusional. (Though quite a lot of them seem to be making a better living out of it than I am) So all that could quite easily be true. So it does make sense. but that's enough troll food for one day.

That's just an assertion. You have no evidence for it. It's not science and when you say it is you are back in the world of Humpty Dumpty. BTW, do you know that at least one new mathematical proof has been discovered by a computer. Do you think a bunch of chips is "divine" but I (as an atheist) am not? While I'm at it, this "Did you saw that when you revert back from those branches all those different sects unify itself into Early Christianity?" doesn't even parse, never mind answer the point The point remains that there are many religions and they all survive (at least for the time being) so your assertion ""only a few religions survive" is nonsense. The only sense in which science and religion are converging is that 300 years ago the only explanation of "why does so and so happen" was "Goddidit". Now science is explaining more and more complex phenomena and religion is left "explaining" less and less. (That's the weird use of the word "explaining" where they say "Goddidit" and pretend that this brings some sort of understanding.) So things like "why are there planets and a sun?" was once the realm of religion, but now it's science. As there are fewer things left for science to look at, it looks at the more complex problems like "How did the universe begin?" and historically that was the realm of the God botherers there could be said to be a convergence, but it's a product of what's called the "God of the gaps" idea. It's not that science is approaching religion, it's that religion is retreating.

Believe me, we changed our behaviour. Porn films seldom have a lot to do with reality.

If the process were anything but very slow the heat released from the burning iron would be a problem before the lack of oxygen.

There are lots of "freons" and they are all more or less toxic. In any event, none of them is oxygen.

CO2 is toxic, Ar is only marginally denser than air (about 33%). SF6 and Xe are not what most people consider cheap. In any event, diffusion will mix the gas into the air and reduce the oxygen concentration in the breathing zone (so they will get light-headed and fall over and die). Xe is an anaesthetic at or around atmospheric pressure. If you had money to burn you could use a premixed 20% O2 in SF6 mixture, but God help you getting any sort of license to play with this at a public event.

OK, this is a banana. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Red_Apple.jpg You guys seem to assume I have made my own personal definition of religion banana and since this definition is not agreed by everyone instead of accepting my definition you guys want to make me as a separate sect and want to call me a fundamentalist.

If they trip over, they will die.

Even if Wigner were not dead he would be an authority on physics, not religion and so , even if argument by authority were not a logical fallacy he would be a poor example on two grounds. Is that the best you can do? I agree with Penrose that 2 +2 is 4 without the need for any human intervention. But there's no need for divine intervention either Here's a list of about 20 pages of Christian sects. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_denominations which makes your assertion "only a few religions survive" absurd. As is the claim that it is " backed up by science." Science would call for real evidence and you have provided none, you just keep playing at being Humpty.

But, if true religion is about being one with God, then those of us who are not so blessed are necessarily ignorant of it. We can not know it. You just thanked us for stating the obvious. But, before you bother to ponder that too much, perhaps you should answer Chad's rather telling question.

Arete, Thanks for spotting that they say "It’s been borrowed from one of our in-press publications". That observation rather supports my suggestion that it's attention seeking of some sort. I did have a quick look on Amazon to see if there was a book she was promoting (which was my first suspicion) but didn't find one.

Just a quick point. Since plasma is ionised it contains + charged and - charged ions. If you use a magnetic or electrostatic field to accelerate these they will go in opposite directions. I advise that you don't stand behind the plasma gun.

Look at that again and see if it's now any clearer? Does that make it obvious that I'm not a medic in any way? All I did was underline what I already wrote Once again, you don't actually seem to have read what I wrote. " Is it "John Cuthber, M.D." or not ?" No, not least because (like you) I don't use my real name here and I have never made any secret of that. Doing so means that I don't have to worry about posting an opinion which disagrees with my employer's. The point is that I can act as a disinterested party here. I'm not a medic but, among other things, I'm a trained expert witness and I can assure you that you are wrong in saying " In court, if a witness testifies to the inadequacy of one or the other party's scientific or other expert credentials as a means of impeaching the worth of that other witness's testimony, then the opposing counsel has every right and duty to insist on a presentation of the supposedly better grounds for the (claimed or implied) superior authority of the counter-witness. " The court has the right to expect evidence that one argument or the other is more convincing. It doesn't matter if the better argument is put forward by a 5 year old. It's not a superior witness that makes the difference, it's a superior logical rationalisation of the evidence. Thinking that a medic is better placed to comment on this is, (as was already pointed out) an appeal to authority. I'm saying that my argument wins because if ultrasound harms babies then there would be lots of babies who were harmed. Where are they? I'm not saying my argument is better because I'm anything special. I'm saying it's better because it doesn't predict an epidemic of babies with problems. The particular definition of teratogenesis you choose doesn't actually alter my point (I already pointed that out) for two reasons. firstly we know that many forms of foetal damage do produce birth defects. Secondly, it just broadens the issue a bit. Instead of looking for an epidemic of birth defects we would look for an epidemic of other health problems which tracked the rise in the use of ultrasound scans. Unless there is such an epidemic, the point still stands. By the way, since I work in toxicology (among other things) I may well count as an expert on things like teratology or I may not. It doesn't matter since the question here is actually one of epidemiology (Yep, you may have guessed it, that's another field I work in). So, if an argument from authority is valid then, since I'm an expert in epidemiology, my view wins. If arguments from authority are not valid then their status as doctors is irrelevant and the fact that my view doesn't predict an epidemic which is not actually observed means that my view wins because the evidence is on my side. Find the epidemic which E L W predicts or take your pick of reasons why I'm right.

"As I indicated if you people keep insist that even fundamentalists who behead innocent people are religious" It's not our insistence. If you asked them why they do this they would tell you that their religion requires it. "those who hold and follow the central tenets of religions which was the main teachings of Jesus, Shankara, Buddha and Moses might have to find a all new word to identify themselves with because religion itself seems to have been corrupted and actually that's what the trend seems to indicate." Nope, it's not a corruption it is, for example, right there in the Bible which Jesus said we should follow. For example if some mob stones a gay man to death they can say that they were acting in accordance with their religion and cite Leviticus If a man lie with a man, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. So, either you say that the bible isn't a religious book or you have to accept that these people were following their religion. The fact that the Bible contains a lot of things that are not acceptable is not my problem because I think it's all hogwash. It's only an issue if you try to live your life by it. (And I chose an Old Testament law deliberately in order to include the other major monotheistic religions.)

" The effects of ultrasound technology, particularly as concerns effects on soft tissues in fetuses in utero, are quite reasonably liable to be at the cellular level, and not, as you’ve confined the “search-area” to be—in obvious defects in internal or external organs of the new-born." I remind you that the original text you quoted is the one which introduces the idea of teratogenicity So the search area I chose was the one that you chose for me. While birth defects are often apparent at birth, they sometimes only show up later- for example the "hole in the heart" problem. If scanning produced these then they too would have become more common and people would have noticed that.. The time-scale for diagnosis doesn't affect my reasoning. If scanning was harmful we would have noticed the harm. We have't so it isn't (unless there's evidence that the incidence of birth defects has risen in line with ultrasound.) Let me clarify something You post a page that is clearly biassed in favour of the point of view that ultrasound causes problems- but it ignores the lack of supporting evidence. It includes a deliberately scary picture of a damaged metal pump. It's entirely one-sided and doesn't give anything like a balanced report. I put forward a contrary point of view and you call it biassed. You don't see that your complaint about my message but not the original, is evidence of your own bias. Instead you compare yourself with Einstein. re ".a plain honest concern, based on reasoned facts..." Nope, the facts are that we don't have an epidemic of birth defects so a reasoned concern would realise that this can't be much of an issue. It is not reasonable to extrapolate from the (known) effect of cavitation in pumps (where cavitation is known to happen) to the case of ultrasound scans (where it isn't). "On the contrary, you have presented absolutely nothing in evidence" Just as well that I never said that I had then, isn't it? "Your imagination is manifestly lacking something which comes without strain or effort to my imagination: the possibility that the author(s) are motivated by a good-faith and soundly-reasoned concern for the welfare of the general public. " Nope, wrong again. I considered this but rejected it. The welfare of the general public is not served by people issuing scaremongering reports. You would be right if the work were "soundly reasoned" but the lack of an epidemic starting about 1950 shows that it is not sound or reasoned. So, there must be another reason. I suggested that it might be attention seeking. And, as I said that my only interest was that of maintaining the quality of the site, you can accept that I don't have any other interest in the matter- I'm not a medical professor or whatever and I'm not in the business of selling ultrasound equipment. If I were then I would have said so. I said I only had one interest in the matter. I don't appreciate your implication that I might have lied about that. I didn't "skirt the question: I answered it directly. Your own bias seems to have stopped you understanding it. What, exactly, did you think the word "only" meant?