John Cuthber

My favourite proof of God's existence popped up about 10 years ago when a mathematician "proved" the existence of God. He looked at various miracles and calculated some probabilities and proved that it was more than 50:50 that God existed. What I particularly liked about this proof was that one of it's assumptions (albeit, not a declared one) was that miracles exist. If you assume that miracles exist then, for most sensible definitions of the word "miracle" you have implicitly accepted that some sort of God exists. Since the guy calculated a probability of less than 100% for the existence of God, even though he had tacitly assumed it, not only was his maths illogical (you can't assume God's existence when trying to show the existence of God) but he got the arithmetic wrong too. Incidentally, while I was trying to look up a reference to that bad mathematician, I found this page which lists 666 "proofs" for the existence of God. http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/GodProof.htm I particularly like number 582

Most of us think the universe is complicated enough without adding God to it.

Yes, copper for example, but that needs more acid to dissolve it. Since you can get the silver back fairly easily it gets used in spite of its cost.

"CO doesn't kill you per-se, but robs a body of its natural intake of oxygen." You still die.

I must be missing something in Pioneer's idea that "god is selective advantage. If you consider that the poorest people are often more religious" unless you consider being poor to be an advantage. Incidentally, I thought we knew when the Christian church was invented Here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea in 325 AD. As opposed to Bugs bunny http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Wild_Hare 1940 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster which dates from 2005 It really is just a matter of the dates that distinguishes them.

Don't forget that a badly designed coal burner will generate lots of carbon monoxide and poison everyone.

"These nitrogen fixing bacteria and their host plants" What plants? Catch 22. Depending on circumstances, bird droppings might well be the bets source of nitrogen

I must be dumb or something. The 4 bar linkage refers to 4 rigid links. The knee has 2 bones which are rigid and a whole bunch of ligaments and stuff that are flexible. Can someone please tell me what part(s) of the knee is meant to be a 4 bar link?

Ethoxylation is the addition of C2H4O to something using ethylene oxide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethoxylation I can't see how it figures in making paraben.

No, faith in this context is the determination to believe in something when not only is there is no evidence for it, but there is evidence against it being a reasoanble way to behave. Doesn't matter if it's 9/11, Stalin; the crusades; or Pol Pot. It's always a bunch of people who are so certain that they are right that they can't see why they are wrong. Also, Ewmon, you cant play the "modern Christianity is different " card unless it really is different. It's still dogma rather than evidence.

I can't think of any nitrogen compounds that would be present in volcanic soils. Eventually nitrates from the air (via lightning) would provide nitrogen but until then life would struggle.

A couple of things. You might want to look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavity_ring-down_spectroscopy The geometry is a bit different but the maths is similar. If you could do this trick, what would you have achieved?

There's little to distinguish Nazism or Stalinism from religion; this includes the fact that they kill "non believers". What all those groups have in common is blind belief in some "faith" that gives them the "divine right" to kill others. Science doesn't do that and nor does atheism per se. The problem occurs when you start believing the dogma rather than the evidence.

It's possible that using the gel might make some people feel safe so they would screw around more. That would increase their risk. If the effect of the gel exactly countered that you would see the same incidence in both groups and conclude that the gel didn't work, which would be the wrong conclusion.

Is there any significant amount of anger shown by the atheists? My contention is that there is not and, therefore, that the whole thread isn't valid. Some atheists get a bit worked up about this but then some people get worked up about politics or even music. Would anyone start a thread about "Why do some fans of a different operating system get so angry when people support another operating system?" Also the bit about the 2 groups misses the point. Trying to prevent people from joining the "mass murdering society" by almost any means possible is , to my mind, not a bad thing. If one way to do that is by writing shirty replies to posts on discussion fora then that seems to me to be a sensible thing to do. It might not work very well, but at least you can say you tried.

Use of a gel may change behaviour, so that wouldn't be a valid control.

There really is a difference between the extremist wing of atheism, who post intemperate comments on discussion boards and the extremist theists who kill people. It really doesn't make sense to say that the former are the ones full of hatred. Before you can discuss the question "Why the anger?" you need to ask "Is there much anger?" and, compared to the theists, the answer seems to be no.

The point remains that it's not atheists who kill those who disagree with them so it's not realistic to say it's the atheists who display the hatred and venom.

What else could you do?

A group of medics and their translators were killed recently in Afghanistan for their religious beliefs by another group of fanatical believers; and you think that it's the atheists who show hatred and venom? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10900338

Since all humans can breed with all other humans* it's fair to say that we are all related. Since we are, therefore, all n th cousins m times removed, the question is how big a value of n and m are you prepared to put up with? * there's the requirement that males breed with females but, at worst, that just means skipping a generation..

People don't generally dissolve the working parts of their refrigerators then inject the solution. It's an interesting point though.

I suspect that many researchers are well aware of it. Here is one aspect of their research. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchbox_sign

What stopped the other food industries doing the same? I think that the reasons are two fold. Psychologically milk is seen as "pure" and safe. The doctors and such agreed. At the time many people were underfed- in particular they were short of calories and vitamins. Milk supplies both. But you still have to remember that milk has a history that goes back a lot further than modern marketing.

In this case "we" means people like me. The article shows that some doctors have noted what might well be a correlation between high protein or high fat levels in the diet and some forms of illness. Pressure from the dairy industry certainly won't help publicise this but you seem not to have noticed. This report isn't suppressed; you read it and so did I.