John Cuthber

There's the problem. "live your life as if God does exist". We don't actually know what (if anything) God wants. So, do I go to church on Friday, Saturday or Sunday? (and a thousand other similar questions.) You can't actually meet the requirement except by luck, and that makes it a very poor bet. Yes, of course I deny it, because I'm not an idiot and I like a lie-in on Sundays. So I know that the column on the right is incorrect. It should say "miserably dull sermon spoils roughly 14% of your life" and " doing what you choose on Sundays." So, even the straw man is factually incorrect.

That's interesting. Devitrification normally stops the glass being transparent. It must have taken some clever work to get the crystals to have the same refractive index as the glass matrix.

The trouble with Pascal's wager is that it's only a 1 in 3000 shot that you follow the right religion. Statistically, your God has already condemned you by accident of birth. You might as well have a good time.

Did you somehow think that was relevant?

I'm sure we would all like to see the details of that.

Given the extremely violent reaction of oleum with water it's probably better to add the oleum to ice. It may also be a better bet to let it absorb water from the air (until it gains the right mass), but the fumes would be a problem. Fundamentally, if you can't do basic chemistry like the calculation above, you shouldn't be working with oleum.

It makes no sense to talk about adding oxides of carbon (which are gases or too unstable to exist in molten glass). That web page is wrong. You could add carbon- which is black.

So, the God who you say is showing love is condemning be by not telling me. That's a shitty way for Him to behave, isn't it? Bother! Best move this post too.

God is notably not saying anything. He never did. You are making up what you want to hear.

Probably a mixture but I'd expect that it's largely manganese that is giving that colour.

You do know where they got it from, don't you? Leviticus 20.10 New International Version (NIV) “‘If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death. https://xkcd.com/285/

Not unless you are straight and married, according to Leviticus. That's a poor argument. Douglas Adams squashed it more eloquently than I ever will, so here's a quote. “This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'

To whom does it seem that way? Is there any evidence to support that view? Screwing your girlfriend would also get you stoned to death- for adultery. Have you actually read your scriptures?

Nobody said they did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man Anyway, just a thought, as far as I understand it, this "Thou shalt not bear false witness" is an instruction not to lie about what others have said and this "Well anybody who screws mankind is an abomination" is a dishonest report of what Leviticus (reportedly) said. Shouldn't you be apologising for doing that?

Thoughts and prayers.

We got our bravery to end slavery from the same god who told us to take slaves in the first place. Fixed that for you.

And they called themselves that because they were following what their scripture told them to do. They were going forth, and being fruitful, and they were enslaving the "foreigners", just as their book told them to. Obviously, if man is made in God's image and the inhabitants of the new world were the wrong colour, then they weren't properly part of mankind- so they didn't warrant treating as humans. That's how the Bible said to behave, and that's what the Christians did. People have used the Bible to "justify" all sorts of wrongdoings. Sometimes it's because they deliberately misread it And sometimes it's because the book really is immoral

I assumed the source could be taken as read but... Leviticus 25:44-46 New International Version (NIV) 44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly. and " Leviticus 20:13 King James Version (KJV) 13 If a man also lie with mankind, 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. King James Version (KJV)" (If you don't like Leviticus, Romans has a similar view) you forgot to append "any more". If, however you stop being so laughably insular and look at other countries and cultures, you find that their prophets and gods turn up in their dreams. I think the relevant quote is something about the mote in your eye

We really need to nail this one. The Western world acts morally, for example, in that it treats people as equals regardless of race or sexuality. And it does that in spite of Christianity not because of it. Christian belief is not "the good guy" here. They certainly do not come from religion. However, any society without morals (with or without a religion) would fail in the long run. You can get a long way with just one rule- do unto others as you would have others do unto you. But that rule predates Christianity by millennia. The God-squad just "appropriated" it Actually, a belief is exactly what it is. However, it's not a religion. It is not a thing in the same category as a religion.

Well, for a start, "other gods are available" so it's not Christianity Also; the system is based on keeping your slaves properly, stoning adulterers and trial by ordeal? Or, it isn't- because it's not based in Christianity. See above.

I think you have that the wrong way round. https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/biblical-contradictions/ Most isotopes in the periodic table are not stable. But, of course, teh unstable ones have largely decayed. So what we are left with are the stable ones. It's a bit like evolution. The survivors survive.

The thing about electronegativity is that there are at least 3 different scales for it, and no two of them agree. That rather gives the game away that it's a wishy washy concept.

Did you mean Linus Pauling? It hardly matters because, in fact the term "electronegativity" was introduced byJöns Jacob Berzelius in 1811 Also, did you think there was anything new in what you said?

If you have something which is inert to wet chlorine, then you do not have steel.

I, an object, object to that.