John Cuthber

Some of the people of Newtown flocked together in the place where they worship the God who could have stopped the killings, but didn't. Sounds pretty broken to me.

I believe that his continued refusal to accept the truth as supported by evidence* is consistent with his religious belief and I also the either or both of these could be considered evidence that he is (in the sense intended in this thread) "broken". * specifically his continued assertion that iNow, and possibly others, are dishonest when he can not possibly know if that is the case or not.

"From a more basic standpoint, there is simply no mechanism by which day of birth could reasonably impact personality (except that the surrounding culture or society may be slightly different year over year)." There are perfectly plausible mechanisms. For example, people who reach some "critical" age when the pollen count is high are more likely to develop asthma and hay-fever. Those people are, as a consequence, less likely to take up outdoor and athletic pursuits. Since they have to do something, they are more likely to take up "bookish" activities. This trend is likely to be affected by latitude- being near zero at the equator abut larger near the poles. Also the effect will be opposite in the two hemispheres. Sadly, I doubt the OP will get anything like enough data to measure the effect,but that's not the same as saying the effect can't happen. " Autumn and winter conceptions were associated with an increased risk of childhood asthma admission:" from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3263424/

Reaction of iron with nitric acid will give rise to rather nasty oxides of nitrogen as by-products. At the very least, you need to do that reaction outside away from people. Also, if i remember rightly, conc nitric passivates iron so you would need to dilute the acid first. You need to use an excess of nitric acid in order to ensure that the iron is all oxidised to Fe(III) and also to enssure that the solution is strongly acidic or you will get hydrolysis products. What do you want ferric nitrate for?

So, why pick on Dawkins? In referring to God as "He", all he did was follow a rather arbitrary (and sexist) convention that the God squad dreamed up. The real problem isn't with Dawkins' scale is it? The problem lies with the patriarchal monotheist churches. You could simplify Dawkins' stance to say that he would be happy if religion went away, and that he is striving towards that. If he were to succeed then the sexist and absurdly anthropomorphic descriptions of God would go away too.

1 prove it. 2 that's not what anyone said is it? Why are you setting up a strawman pretending they did? Anyway, there's no problem with you saying "I think you are wrong" (though evidence would help) There is a problem with saying "you are lying" 3 No, not really. If there were an alternate reality that we might access and which it was useful to access then evolution would have made sure we were all bloody good at it. Since we can't, it follows that such a "reality" doesn't exist. 4 it's a matter of perfectly clear record why you accused him. The analogies used are not false (or, at least, nobody has yet falsified them) Over-generalisation is an issue best resolved by simply pointing out its failings- not by making accusations of dishonesty.

So what? What you said was " claiming that people who believe in God are broken is definitely a dishonesty on your part." If he believes that people who believe in God are broken (and I have every reason to think he does) then it's not dishonest, even if it's wrong. Incidentally, until you can show the difference between unicorns and God it's perfectly reasonable to equate belief in the two.

Nonsense. Even if you had shown that he was wrong( and you have not) then at most you would have shown that he was mistaken, not dishonest. Do you not know the difference?

What he said was "The 'concept of x' necessarily exists independently of the actuality of 'x'." So what you are saying in his defence, "it is possible for things to exist, as they really are, without us knowing about them." means that he's wrong.

I know what you quoted. The point remains that you accused him of dishonesty Specifically you said " claiming that people who believe in God are broken is definitely a dishonesty on your part." and, thus far, you have offered nothing to support that assertion. Just because you disagree with him doesn't make him (or me) a liar. The fact that he is forthright in expressing his opinion doesn't mean he is lying. Are you going to accept that you have accused him without any evidence or are you going to show that he said one thing while believing another?

The obvious point to make in respect of the first clause is that of course it's a tree- it grew from an acorn. What do you think it is ? an elephant? At a slightly deeper level you seem to be arguing against yourself here. You say that "Something can exist without us having knowledge of it's existence, such an existing thing would not be a tree though" but you also say that " Even if you describe something that is exactly the same as an existing entity, you have not described that existing entity." So, it's only a tree if we perceive it but, even when we describe it we only describe what we perceive it to be rather that its true self. There's a tree in my garden. When I look at it is it not really a tree, just my perception of it or is it a really tree because I perceive it? When you make up your mind please get back to us.

If you look you will see that I usually write God with a capital letter (I sometimes forget). That's just a linguistic convention. It does not, for example, mean that I think that God exists. Similarly I refer to Him as "Him". It's just another convention- it saves the time of writing Him/ Her/ It every time. (And it certainly doesn't originate from the atheists anyway so it can't sensibly be some "plot" by Dawkins. You might notice that nowhere in Dawkins' scale is there any mention of reproductive biology. So this bit of your text "Does not seem to me, that it is likely that there is a "being" with an anatomy such as ours, which has evolved to exist and procreate on this Earth. " seems preposterous. It doesn't matter that you think it's unlikely that God has a willy. I think someone should also remind you that, from half the populations point of view,if they wanted to describe God as being "a projection of ourselves upon the universe," they would call God "She". What you seem to have done there is set up your own strawman in an attempt to move the discussion to the pointless realm of linguistic versus natural gender. Until there is any evidence that God exists it's pretty pointless to speculate on whether the correct pronoun is He, She or It. The strawman certainly isn't Dawkin's creation. If you look you will find the authorship much closer to home. OK, as you say, the thread isn't about Inow. so why did you accuse him of dishonesty? the only way you could legitimately have done that was to read his mind. You say you didn't do that so, how do you know what he really thinks and how do you know that what he thinks is different from what he says?

Naphthalene stinks (I know it's too late for the exam)

There's a tree, deep in the jungle, it's an unusual shape. It exists, but until someone sees what shape it is, the concept of that tree doesn't fully exist. More importantly, that concept didn't exist until I thought of it. Have you heard of a self portrait? OK, fair enough, if you define God as being "the physical universe" then He exists. But it's like the people who think that Prince Philip is God: it's such a rare point of view that it's not a lot of use. It's like saying "My mad uncle Harry thought god was a bottle of chilli sauce: the bottle of sauce exists so god exists." It's true for a very limited range of definitions of God.

I didn't miss out the idea that the password is real: I pointed out that, most of the time it isn't very real. As I said "More importantly, until it actually existed as a spoken word or whatever, it couldn't do anything in the real world.". Once it's a real bunch of soundwaves , it's real (In principle, of course, it's a bunch of connections in the brains of the society's members). So, for the third time of asking, please can you give a definition of God that actually corresponds with something real? If you can't then I suspect people will think you are trolling.

It would be false to say that unicorns have straight horns. But, more relevantly, it would be false to say that they exist. An idea can have many attributes such as colour (unicorns are silver or white) or number of legs (4 in the case of the unicorn- unless it's had an accident). One of the really important attributes you need to consider is that of being real. It's true for bravery or love, but it's not true for unicorns and God. As I have said, there are many different assertions about the nature of God. The problem is that many of them include an inaccurate assessment of the property of being real. So, once again, I'm asking you for any meaningful definition of God that actually includes being real. re"If I had a secret society, and we in the society had a secret password, which was never and will never be written down, or recorded, or even hinted at...would this password "exist" in reality, as more than just a thought in a particular member's mind?" No, it would only exist in the members' minds but nobody is saying that the password built the universe or whatever. More importantly, until it actually existed as a spoken word or whatever, it couldn't do anything in the real world. The concept of God can exist independently of the actuality of god. The night I spent with the Minogue sisters has exactly the same reality as God and the password: it only exists in my mind. Kylie and Danii can provide evidence that the night concerned doesn't exist. The problem is that you can't summon God as a witness to prove His existence and anything else really doesn't cut it as evidence. So far as we can test for God, He never does anything. Is it possible to distinguish between something which doesn't exist and something which "exists" but can never be detected and never influences anything?

There are two parts to the reason. Firstly the air inside us is at practically the same pressure as the air outside us. So we are being blown out as much as we are being squashed in. Secondly the things we are made of are not very compressible. Increasing the pressure on water by 14.7 PSI only reduces the volume by about 50 parts in a million.

Quite true. Bravery exists- I could cite examples. However , what I asked you to do was provide evidence for the existence of the "God" that so many people believe in. Please do so. "Is saying God/gods doesn't/don't exist really adding or subtracting from the concept of God/gods though?" Yes, of course it does. For example, it takes away any point to getting up early on a Sunday to go to church. It destroys any justification of the role of the church(es) in politics. It means that one of the largest organisations on earth is a fraud. Did you really not understand that?

Much the same as when I say unicorns don't exist. Re "If the word god has an accepted meaning, then it has an existing referent." From WIKI "In semantics a referent is a person or thing to which a linguistic expression refers" The word "God" refers to an idea- not a thing or person so, in as far as that definition is correct, then you are wrong. The word God usually refers to some sort of all powerful being that created the Universe. the word Unicorn usually refers to a roughly horse shaped creature with a spiral horn that can only be tamed by a virgin or shod with silver. People used to believe in both of these. Belief in one is now rare because there's no evidence for them. Oddly, belief in the other persists. In maths i usually refers to the square root of minus 1 Perhaps the simplest point is that, while I have heard plenty of definitions of God from various theists I have never seen any evidence of God's existence. It doesn't seem to matter whose definition of God you choose, He still doesn't exist. Similarly, some definitions of unicorns have the animal looking like a cow, rather than a horse but, since neither version exists, the details are beside the point. Can you provide a definition for any widely accepted God that actually exists as anything but an abstract concept (like the unicorn)? I know that there are supposedly people who think that Prince Philip is a God but I don't think that counts even though I think he is real. he doesn't meet the "normal" requirements of being a God. (He's not old enough for a start)

It would be simpler to just use evaporating water as the coolant.

I have a bottle with some ammonium nitrate solution in it. How long do I need to watch it before the dissolution reverses?

Anyone who follows Layne's advice will, of course, die as a result. If you managed to avoid eating fats then you wouldn't get the essential fatty acids and that would kill you. Also the human diet has included fruit since prehistory: most fruits are fairly acid. In particular many of them contain ascorbic acid- also known as vitamin C- without which, you die.

No,, of course it doesn't. We use the word Unicorn or Hobbit. It doesn't mean they exist. More relevantly, we can use words like "big bang"

It isn't just fashion that rejects Paley's work. For a start it fails to take account of the nature of evolution (hardly a shock if it was printed before Darwin popularised that theory). Also, the accidental watch isn't as unlikely as he thought it was. Pointing out that Darwin took a copy of Paley's book on the beagle adds nothing to the discussion. He probably took a bible too. "1. The universe does exist. It seems rather odd that there should be something rather than nothing. One suspects the need for a First Cause, which we might as well call God." Fine, call it what you will, but don't ascribe properties to it without evidence. Don't, for example, say that it took 7 days or that it created a garden of Eden. In fact, since the word "God" is already used for something it's a bit silly to use it for something that may be something else. Does it make sense to say " The universe does exist. It seems rather odd that there should be something rather than nothing. One suspects the need for a First Cause, which we might as well call newspaper." or does that risk leading to confusion? Perhaps it would be better to let the word newspaper continue in it's well established role? In that case, perhaps it's also better to leave the word "God" as it is, and find a better name for the beginning of the universe. How about this? "The universe does exist. It seems rather odd that there should be something rather than nothing. One suspects the need for a First Cause, which we might as well call creation." OK, there's still a problem- this bit " It seems rather odd that there should be something rather than nothing." It might seem that way to you, but to me it's obvious. If there was nothing rather than something then I'd not be here to wonder about it. Since I'm here there must be "something"- it's not odd at all, it's a clear consequence of my being here that "something" must exist. Incidentally, that's the same argument as has, in fact, been used to refute your 4th point. I think Douglas Adams put it as well as anyone. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/70827-this-is-rather-as-if-you-imagine-a-puddle-waking This" That is bizarre. One can imagine a non-sentient First Cause producing a non-sentient universe, but a sentient universe rather seems to demand a sentient First Cause" is a logical fallacy called an argument from ignorance. Just because you can't see how that happened without a God doesn't mean a God is needed- it may mean you missed something. As for "There is an intriguing argument that we may be part of a computer simulation. That would make the programmer, or programming team, God." the simple answer is "or we may not" and, since there's no evidence that we are, it's a non-starter as evidence for God's existence. Specifically, it's an example of begging the question.

The difference is that while it was science (after a fashion) that invented Phlogiston, it was also science that checked on it and found that it was wrong. They came up with the idea but they didn't believe in it so they tested it. That's essentially the opposite of religion where they come up with an idea that can't (usually) be tested and then cling to belief in it even when it's as fishy as anything. The idea of phlogiston, flawed though it was, at least explained some observed facts. the idea of God doesn't explain anything because "Goddidit" isn't a reason.