Cap'n Refsmmat

I'm not sure what you're trying to say. "Before Abraham was, I am" is a claim to divinity: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/sbrandt/iam.htm

You seem to be about 40 years behind in guided weapon development. Also about 50 years behind in tactical bomber aircraft.

You have a mighty strange definition of "rebellion," then. If it's possible to rebel against someone you support strongly, than sure, you're right. I have and they say that scriptures, as the link above indicates, should not be read literally. I agree that taking the Bible literally is foolish, but you are not demonstrating it adequately. You are taking passages out of context and using them in ways that differ from the standard Christian and Jewish theological interpretations, and so Christians and Jews can easily reject your arguments. It is valuable to learn a good historical background behind the formation of the Bible to understand its meaning.

What is anti-spacetime and how does it relate to ordinary spacetime?

You think demons can possess an animal with no vocal chords and make it speak. I don't see how you have the high ground. So you're going to alternately quote the Bible for support and deny its validity? Is the Bible reliable or not? Not quite. You have failed to understand Jesus' point. Here's the passage in question: Context is important here. The Pharisees are a sect who interpreted Biblical laws, such as the Sabbath, in practical terms for everyday people. They had to decide questions like, "What exactly does it mean to 'work'? What activities are not allowed on the Sabbath? How far may we travel? May we prepare food?" In this case, the Pharisees clearly came to the conclusion that not even picking grain to eat was acceptable on the Sabbath. Food preparation was forbidden. Jesus, however, rejects their legalistic interpretation; he says the rules were intended for the benefit of man, and hence allow people to eat when they are starving. Jesus is essentially saying "no, you don't know what the rules really mean, or why they exist." He is not saying "I want to violate all the rules!" If I support a law so strongly I wish for it to be extended, am I rebelling against it? No. The rule against adultery existed for the purpose of maintaining family succession. If a woman committed adultery, her real husband could not be certain his sons were indeed his own sons, the family name would be corrupted, and inheritance ruined. If a man was unfaithful, his family name would get along just fine, so long as he had a few legitimate kids as well. The crime of adultery in the Jewish scriptures refers specifically to women. Take it up with the scholars if you disagree.

It appears Gaddafi has been using cluster bombs on civilian areas and cities: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/world/africa/16libya.html?_r=1&hp Again, I think you fail to distinguish between actions which unintentionally and unpredictably kill civilians, and Gaddafi's actions to deliberately inflict civilian casualties. However, there's a worrisome change in US, French and British policy on the situation: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/15/obama-sarkozy-cameron-libya

Why should there be a supernatural force? After all, "the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the LORD God had made." Gen 3:1. Genesis 3:14: "The LORD God said to the serpent, 'Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals, and among all wild creatures; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.'" The snake is an animal. Associating the snake with the Devil is a later phenomenon -- the concept of an all-powerful Satan did not exist when the Old Testament was written. (And no, the Satan in Job is not an all-powerful devil figure. "Satan" means "adversary." Satan was an angel in God's court which was an adversarial figure, like a prosecutor.) You said that Jesus "rebelled against the status quo of the written laws". What you quote does not support it -- largely because it cannot be supported: http://www.biblegate...-20&version=NLT Jesus does not advocate rebellion against the laws of the Pharisees -- he advocates following the law even better. Read the rest of Matthew 5; you'll see he says it's not enough to, say, obey the commandment against murder -- one must not even get angry at anyone. Not committing adultery is not enough; looking at a woman with lust is bad enough. These are not the words of someone rebelling against the law. "Coveting" does not mean "having sex with," by the way. In fact, adultery in the Old Testament and in the Commandments is specifically a rule that can only be broken by women. Jewish men cannot commit adultery because adultery is the crime of a woman having extramarital relations. From the HarperCollins Bible Dictionary: God did not sin in causing the birth of Jesus, according to his own rules.

Since you know the velocity when it hits the ground, you can find the kinetic energy, right? So there's a more intuitive way to work this out. As you said before, [math]W=\Delta E_k[/math]. If the arrow goes to a standstill, the final [math]E_k =0[/math], so you can figure out what [math]\Delta E_k[/math] must be. Then you know that [math]W = Fd[/math] -- that is, work is force times distance. And since [math]F=ma[/math], [math]W = mad[/math]. You know the distance the arrow travels in the ground and its mass. Run with it.

What is a "religionist"? Presumably God is capable of impregnating a woman to give birth to a child who is fully divine, if He so chooses. That's the thing about omnipotence, you know... Regardless, Jesus did not rebel. Do you have examples to prove otherwise?

On what basis do you make this claim? Nowhere in Genesis is it claimed that the serpent of the Garden of Eden is in any way related to Satan. Jesus specifically told his followers to follow Roman laws, such as taxation, and to pay their temple tax. The laws he most commonly fought against in the Gospels are the unwritten laws of the Pharisees, who interpreted the Torah to create complex systems of rules to allow ordinary people to stay "pure" in regular life.

Exactly. If you want to convince us, we need to see that it matches all known data. In detail. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Nope. You'll notice that God put a condition on their residence in Eden -- not eating the apple from the tree -- and when they broke the rules, they were booted out. They did not have free reign. Similarly, God's covenant with Abraham has several conditions, and in Leviticus and Deuteronomy God lays out the rules the Israelites must follow. When they break the rules, they pay. I think you'll find that this conception of Satan is a modern invention rather than a Biblical one.

Why should it not be possible for consciousnesses to be duplicated along with everything else?

The center of mass will not wobble in orbit absent an external force. Earth can wobble around its center of mass, but the center of mass will continue in its nice tidy orbit.

[math]4\pi^2 = (2 \pi)^2[/math] If you do the Newtonian derivation of Kepler's laws, the pi comes out of the circumference of the orbit, not the spherical nature of Earth. http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Skepl3rd.htm I would think the wobble would change the orbit if you consider the physical center of Earth as the orbital path, but not if you consider Earth's center of mass. The center of mass will orbit the same no matter how Earth wobbles around it. Absent an external force (like something smashing into Earth), it will not wobble about its center of gravity. Internal forces cannot shift the center of gravity, though they can redistribute mass around it. No, that's not how equal and opposite reactions work. The reaction force does not act upon the same object as the initial force. For example, if I push on the bookshelf next to me, I act with a force on the shelf, and the shelf acts on me with a reaction force, pushing back on my hand. The two forces act on two different objects.

http://commonsense-p...parenthood.html $363.2 million is the total sum they received from the government, out of $997.3 million total income. 90% of that $363.2m came from Medicaid or the feds. It is not the case that 90% of all of their funding is federal. The Congressional Budget Office still estimates it will reduce the deficit. http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=835 http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=488

Planned Parenthood does not use federal money to conduct abortions of any kind. They have already made this clear.

And my point is that it was never a "gift." The Bible certainly never makes that claim, as far as I'm aware.

The personal settings page merely lists all of your attachments on posts -- they are not separate. It doesn't make sense for you to delete a file from your settings but still have it attached to your posts. I'd like to increase the upload limit, but we currently are running out of disk space. I think we'll be upgrading to larger disks soon.

NATO has already announced its intention to attack rebels who attack civilians. I have linked to this earlier in the thread. Otherwise, how is your argument any different from the argument that "since Libya would not kill civilians if there were no rebels at all, the rebels should all surrender or be shot by NATO"?

Wolfram does not state a y-intercept of -2. Note the label on the x-axis -- it's from 2 to 6, not 0 to 6. Your math is right.

They weren't given any gifts from God either, so God wasn't being an Indian giver by killing them. If you want to change the subject to the morality of God killing lots of people, go ahead, but that's different from what you started this discussion with.

What are "bouncing" and "cutting" intercepts? If I Google for that terminology it just leads me here. I don't know what you're asking for.

Yes, he was wrong. I think you don't quite understand how evolution works. A legless fish does not decide one day "gee, legs would be handy". Evolution works on random mutations. That is, a fish has children fish, one of which has a random genetic mutation that makes it have leg-like things. That fish survives to have more child fish which also have leg-like things, and the legged fish do well, since they can get up on the beach. Then, one of the legged fish hatches a child with a mutation that gives it slightly more advanced legs, and so on. That is to say, the change in genes occurs between generations. Those children with useful mutations survive, and those with harmful mutations die. The animals have no control over the direction of their evolution -- it is random. Natural selection operates on whatever mutations naturally occu.

I'd like to see Inigo open up the other end of the gun, add some baffles, and turn the gun into a pulse jet, actually.