mooeypoo

They weren't supposed to be taken orally!

This is off topic to this thread, but I'll bite. As I repeatedly told you, Scotchmana, all you need to do is provide references to what you know that the mod (or any other member) does not so that the whole world can see how more knowledgeable you are without wondering if what you're saying is just your opinion (which at some point you admitted it was, case in point). We expect this from all our users, be them members or moderators or admins. It's how things go 'round 'ere. You chose not to, and were called out for it. Really, that's all there is to it. No we don't, we just ask that you give us the reason for which you know it's a fact. I don't do dogmas, but feel free to shatter my catmas. You really didn't. Not yet. Why, do you want one? Phi, dude, I told you, when you borrow my whip, clean up the residue, the drycleaner's starting to ask questions.

Alright, seriously, really? I'm not supposed to dig through things and verify what you're saying -- it's your responsibility to produce readable facts and corroboration. You signed up to this forum and by that you agreed to its rules. We'd really love to have an open discussion, but you really need to follow our rules. Why would you do that? Are you here to discuss science or troll the forum? Check the definition of "Internet Troll", friend, because that trick above fits that definition, and that definition equals a ban. As you summarized it yourself - "tone down" your tricks. Rather, don't use any. We're not here to throw dirt and mock one another, we're here to discuss the topics scientifically. No one expects you to have a PhD in the subject matter -- however, you're making the claim, so you need to substantiate it, especially when someone (like PhDwannabe) counters you. It is up to the person making the claim to support the claim. It's not up to us to disprove it. Please do. If you give your thoughts, be ready to have them analyzed, criticized and countered. This isn't a casual mythos forums site, it's a science-oriented forum which means we follow the scientific methodology. First, if these are your opinions, *mark them as such*. Saying "in my opinion, X is true" will produce much less animosity than saying "X is true because I've seen it for myself" which is, essentially, what you said. It's really simple - mark opinion as opinion (which I hope you agree is fair) and backup factual claims with facts (which I hope you agree is fair). And read our rules, too, and I suggest you go over this post too, it's very helpful in seeing how to define thoughts versus actual scientific claims, and explain what people expect you to produce when you make claims. ~mooey

There's a very easy way to solve this, Scotchmana. All you need to do is post references to your claims, and prove your statement. That's all. Anything less is simply wild accusation. Since you're the one who so far made the claims, it was up to you to provide proof for them, because that's the way things work -- the one who makes the claim has the responsibility to prove the claim. We have no responsibility to "disprove you". In science, we assume your statement is untrue until there's corroboration for it. You insist on posting wild claims and provide zero evidence. Then when someone actually confronts you on consistency, you put another bigger claim with zero validation. All you need to do is give us references. No one can argue with a proper reference. Of course, you need to make sure the reference is unbiased and scientific. Yeah, we're demanding here in scienceforums. Go figure. ~mooey

Actually, you do. We're going by scientific research. That excludes everything posted so far. Beyond the fact that I insist you stop going in circles and talking irrelevant data without corroboration, I urge you to please read our rules. You're disobeying them.

I warned you I have a problem handling small parts.

The reason he "got you" here is because you're making definitive statements without a shred of corroborating evidence. You seem to claim a lot about behavior of men vs women. You should be able to find the research that supports it. Anecdotes, memory and interpretation of subjective events are not evidence, not even in psychology. (Jab intended) Peer reviewed publications with the evidence you need to corroborate your statements is what you need. You can find quite a lot of research on google scholar and in the APA, I suggest you start there. We *are* a science forum.

And because he shoots all over the place uncontrollably.

We have to follow our own rules...

Why? Many biblical stories aren't about morality necessarily. There are stories that are supposed to explain current natural phenomena for instance (like why do women suffer and die during child birth, or why you should be meek and beware questioning god's authority, etc). Isn't it possible this is one of those stories? You assume too much right off the bag. Sorry, that's meaningless to me, God is said to be that by a specific group of people. Also, god sets the standards by stating the standards. Nowhere in the book does it say god should *follow* the standards he put forth for *man*. That is, god put up moral standards for man to follow, and god has a different moral standard. It is quite consistently demonstrated in teh bible, and explained with the fact that God is omnipotent and all-knowing. What is "right for man" is not necessarily "right for god" and vice versa. Actually, when extreme religionists claim that god is the moral standard, that's the usual rebuttal. It's only inconsistent with the *interpretation* of the text, a particular interpretation that you are making. It doesn't actually say what you say, so if you don't interpret it this way, it really isn't much of a problem. I always found it ironic with extreme religionists -- their own interpretation sets them up for inconsistencies. Yes, but that isn't necessarily about literalism. Jewish scholars (even religious ones) do not read the bible literally -- there is a whole study of biblical interpretation in judaism. We can argue whether or not the interpretation some Rabbis and scholars make is consistent, but regardless ,they still interpret it -- they go over context, meaning of words, repeated symbolisms, etc. You assume again. If you talk about a particular group of people (namely, extreme literalist christians), then please state so. Otherwise, your comments are internally inconsistent and have an easy rebuttal. Many who? Jews don't, and not all christians. Stop generalizing, please. You're preaching now. You know how I can tell? Switch "literalists and fundamentalists" with "Atheists and Seculars" and "theology" with "philosophy" and "god" with "their leader". If you had read this sentence, you'd flag it as preaching too: See? Don't preach. It doesn't convince anyone, and I seem to not be the only one that *wants* to agree with you, but can't. I don't know why you're saying the OT is the "evil side" and the NT is the "good side of the tree". Can you bring the references of who claims this and where it is claimed? If some people make unfounded ridiculous claims it doesn't mean *all* people make that, nor does it mean that christians in general make it, or even that christian literalists make it. I actually agree with this statement,but for a completely different list of reasons than you state. If you want, I can lay those out logically, but that would be a different topic. Your conclusion does not follow your logic, even if I agree with your conclusion. Preaching again.... Instead of preaching to the choir about how the stories are unrealistic, why don't you start by analyzing the story versus actual reference of what people say they believe? You make vague assumptions about vague beliefs of a vague group of people that you make it sound like everyone follow. It doesn't work like this. Secularists get angry when extreme religionists do to them exactly what you do to the "other side" here. You probably get angry too. Don't fall into the same trap and do it to them, we are supposed to be logical, remember? Logic is supposed to be on "our" side. ~mooey

He would, but then he'd have to kill you, and I'm really too busy right now for any more contracts.

And in case you're wondering, we all look like our avatars.

I thought you said what happened that day stays between us...

I know!! Finally, someone with some sense. I've been sitting with my pasta drainer praying my heart out to the Flying Spaghetti Monster with all its mighty noodly appendages for hours on end, Ramen! It takes a lot of work, and a lot of repentARRRRGHs, but I'm getting there, I'm getting there. Ramen, ~mooey the meek

The thread is a bit old, and our rules adapted a bit since 2009. The Religion/Philosophy forums were closed for a while and when they reopened they were restricted until we found a good way of managing them (seeing as they're a more "dangerous" place for attacks, etc). The particular thread was filled with so much personal attacks and got so heated the topic seemed to have been forgotten. The staff made the piss poor decision of trying to control it, and then the pissier poor decision of removing some of the more outrageous posts and stopping the circular off-topic attacks. Since it was going nowhere other than straight path to the flaming gutter, it was closed. Since then the religion subforum has evolved (closed, reopened, restricted, reopened, etc) and so have our posters and staff. However, a long time has passed since then, so if you think you have something new to contribute on the matter, you can revisit it. The topic itself is fascinating, the problem wasn't the suggested conclusions, it was the attitude in which they were delivered by multiple people throughout that thread. If we can revisit this subject in a civil manner this time, I'm sure we can prevent staff from making pissy poor decisions this time around ~mooey * Tuche', iNow.

There's no problem in fitting in, just try not to push the book too far as to be considered a spammer you have this thread, use it to discuss the book, and avoid pushing it on other threads. Sounds fair, I hope.

! Moderator Note Moved to homework help, I hope you get the assistance you need now, Caffeine.

I tried to go back and see where, exactly, the source of the misunderstanding lies, and to be honest, the majority of the posts are arguments about whether or not people read the claims right. I suggest you start again from post #9 where the references are posted by iNow instead of stating you know better what he meant. ! Moderator Note Enough with the personal jabs and attacks, the blatant and the implied ones. You are all eloquent individuals, and you can use the quote feature to refer to specific claims and refute them.

I think I showed how they don't in my post.

Oh, I agree with you. It *is* hilarious, and it's ridiculous and cannot be taken seriously in a scientific context. But while I personally snort laughter when I see these claims, I try to make sure that it's clear *why* this is so ridiculous. There are quite a lot of people who would think this is a VERY valid claim and would think that your (and my) ridicule of it is out of fear or condescension. So, instead, I try to point out what the problem is with it. My hope is that if people read these enough time, they actually start thinking about them. For that matter, most people are *not* critical thinkers. It's a learnt trait (or something you need to 'feed' to enhance). We can argue about whether or not it can be cured, but the fact is that we have a LOT of people out there who don't *know* how to think about these kind of things. It starts with the extreme of religious miracles, and goes on to the less extreme (but no less 'ridiculous') pseudoscience babble that can literally kill people, or to ghosts, or to "quantum soul" or whatever else. The way, in my opinion, to show people a way OUT of these non-rational thoughts is by showing them how critical thinkers think. If I laugh at a claim, *I* know why, and *you* know why, and the people who already agree with me know why. That's great, but the person who reads this with a slight inclination to the "other side" will *not* understand why we're laughing, and won't learn anything from it. People can be encouraged to think things through, maybe not in a single thread or a single forum, but it does happen as a process. The chances they'd think seriously about a comment that mocks them is lesser. That's my only issue with over-ridicule. ~mooey

I get the idea of philosophizing about other types of life out there, and I do agree that the definition of life should (and does) evolve as we discover new things that might be included in it. I also share the belief that we might find life out there in the universe that we didn't previously define as life. We might, as the OP pointed out in the IRC channel earlier, "look at it and not realize we're looking at life". That may well happen, I agree. Which is why we need to make sure we run proper tests, and keep that in mind to allow for the possibility that the definition of life might need to change. We discover life we didn't think would exist all the time, especially in the past 50 years, and we adjust the definition of life accordingly. Case in point: Life in the bottom of the ocean: http://news.national...03_deepest.html Bacteria living on arsenic: http://www.nasa.gov/...c_chemical.html Extremophiles that live in environments we wouldn't have guessed possible http://en.wikipedia....i/Extremophiles Each of these challenged us to redefine the word "life" and how we see it. And each of those should. For the record, I think the 'arsenic' one turned out to be false (not sure) but regardless, this clearly shows that we're not *rigid* with the definition of life, and scientists do agree that life in the universe can be something we didn't consider as life before. That said, in this particular case, I don't see why we'd want to do that. The only way stars fit the definition of life is if we take the definition of light in the most artistic way possible. Stars don't have a metabolism. You can "think of" fussion as a sort of artistic metabolism, but it has none of the characteristics of actual metabolism; they don't take energy out of their environemnt and transform it to energy they can use. They *produce* energy internally. There isn't really "using" either, here. The fission is "used" to be expelled. Stars don't react to their environment like life does From bacteria to human beings to dogs and fish -- life reacts to its environment in the simplistic or elaborate ways. Reacting can be as simple as an instinct or a change in behavior due to different external stimuli. Bacteria changes its behavior when temperature changes, or when it has more of it around itself, or when it has different bacteria around itself, or when it has food around itself. How do stars "change behavior" due to stimuli? There's quite a lot of stimuli in space, you can consider comets 'stimuli' since some of them go QUITE close to the sun. You can even consider the planets some sort of stimuli, as they change places and align differently during the year. The only thing that happens is that the sun experiences different gravitational forces -- and it doesn't really 'react' to them. If I took a rock and dropped it off a cliff, it would "react" to gravitational forces the same way the sun does; it would fall. That doesn't mean it's reacting to stimuli. There's a few more issues with defining stars as life, but these are, in my view, the big ones. The last point I would like to make is related to our definitions in general. Consider Pluto. Pluto used to be defined as a planet, and last year it was defined otherwise. It wasn't just an arbitrary decision, and it wasn't done because someone hated the little rock so much they wanted it out of the "group" -- it was done because we learned new evidence. We saw that there are so many similar items that are bigger-than or similar-to Pluto, that if we keep pluto in this definition, we will end up with 10,000 planets. Ending up with 10,000 planets might make the definition more "broad", but it would also make the definition of planet less useful. So we defined a new object -- Dwarf Planet -- and reconsidered Pluto and the rest of the objects. Definitions in science are not just meant to help us keep an open mind, they're there to help us describe reality. If a definition is so broad that it includes every possible possibility, it's not useful anymore. ~mooey

I am, and for the record, my post was made as a poster and not as staff. Staff comments are usually done with pink little box thing with a "moderator note" on top. That said, I did speak from knowing the rules, I just thought a nudge from a poster was the better approach rather than a scornful "staff note". Our etiquette rules support my (and Ophiolite's) sentiments, though, so despite how much I may agree with the content of what you're saying, Frontie, I urge you to try and use less ridicule in your posts. It's not just about our rules, honestly. I don't know about the rest of you but I'm here discussing to understand people's approaches ("learn the other side" so to speak) and to try and represent my own opinions as best I can. If this was a private discussion, I might have had a different approach, but the fact this forum is open and is discoverable in google/search means that random readers go over our threads. I would rather my own attitude doesn't reinforce the idea that scientists are dogmatic snobbish obnoxiously "too smart for the rest'a'yas" folk that laugh at everyone else. A lot of people on the 'pseudoscience' and the religion side represent scientists and atheists in that manner, and if we are not careful, we might reinforce that before we even get a chance to get through to someone who *is* out there to learn. I know this isn't what you were aiming for, Frontie (btw, you're not the only one, I'm just referring to you now for context) but I think too much ridicule tends to do more damage than good in discussions like these. It's not like they don't have a place -- they do, and there are forums that encourage them more. But usually, those are best for a sort of 'preaching to the choir', and while there are forums and sites that are awesome about that (and I read ad participate in them too) this particular forum is not meant for that. I know there are people who disagree with me, and they're welcome to (hey, discussion's what we're here for) and I know of at least one individual who despite disagreeing with me on this particular point still has my utmost respect (you know who you iAre). As long as you don't push it beyond our rules, this is a matter of attitude and can be discussed. Just be careful not to take these too far, because too far *is* against our rules. ~mooey Whether or not he or the other specific people who discuss things in the thread are or are not, I can guarantee you that there are more people reading this forum than people participating in the forum. Out of experience, people take what we say to heart, and I know of some examples of people who (slowly) took this step out and away from a dogmatic belief system and into a more scientific outlook -- but that's not usually done in a day or a single thread, and usually it involves being defensive; when you read something that makes you get even more "closed minded" (because the person on the 'other side' is ridiculing and laughing at you) you get much less of a chance to even consider the points they're making. Isn't it a lot better to answer the points with clearly rational counter-points (pepper it, perhaps, with mild amusement when the points are taken too far) and show we are (a) not panicking over these "accusations" from the other side and (b) know what we're talking about, and don't crumble under pressure. ? People do change their minds, even if the people who are actively posting don't. It happens, I know a few people like that, actually. In fact, I changed my mind since I was younger too. It wasn't about religion, it was about pseudoscience nonsense that I will be severely embarassed to admit to -- but I *did* change my mind. And I can tell you that the 'high in the sky' science people who dismissed me without even *listening* to what I had to say? They just convinced me I had something going, not that I might be wrong. Of course you can disagree, and feel free to, that's why we're discussing things here. ~mooey P.S -- I believe we had a thread discussing this before. I personally think we're on topic on this one, since it is related to the "Battle" of "science vs religion" but if you think we're going off topic, use the report button so another moderator can move thigns to a new thread. For fairness, you guys should know: Please don't feel intimidated to answer me because of the little badge I have next to my name. In this particular thread, i'm no longer staff. I am participating in the thread, and therefore gave up my authority as moderator in this thread. If I think something goes against the rules, I will do what any other member does, and use the "Report" button.

We are a science forum, and we all share your feeling about unsupported anecdotes regarding so-called miracles, but if you please, drop the condescending attitude. There's no need for it, and it doesn't really contribute to the arguments you're making. You might not convince the "blindly convinced", but this thread exists on the net for the random readers as well. We will all benefit from being respectful and discussing the problems of the arguments that don't make sense rather than ridicule them and, perhaps, convince random readers that we are dogmatic ourselves. ~mooey

What you say is true, but the reason we stuck to "elemetary physics" is because the thread went there. People did point out that there are other factors that apply, but in general, the same acceleration acts at all objects, which is true. Sometimes, however, we tend to go to the 'simplistic' in these type of questions to make sure we avoid going to issues the originator of the question isn't getting confused. "In principle", all objects fall at the same rate, and "in principle" the fact they don't on earth is due to air resistance. Still, you summarize the issue well.

Can you point us to where the miracle is? The page is mostly about his work.