Ringer

I am mainly afraid of the undersides of tables, which goes against your whole proposition. Is it necessary to attach my face to words for those words to have meaning? No, otherwise books and journals would be meaningless. Who cares what I, or you or anyone here, looks like. The anonymity allows constructive debate without perceptual biases coming into play. To assume people aren't cordially decent because they would rather have their avatar be 007, 18th birthday cake, etc. than a picture of themselves is not only idiotic, but flies in the face of most of this forum. You have been insulting, to say the least, in almost every thread you've been in, and there is, I assume, your picture. If showing your face and a$$ is cordially decent I would rather have my naked GI Joe. If you want face to face interaction go to a conference. [edit] I realize that English is not your native tongue, so in case you're not familiar with the saying 'showing your a$$' it means to look foolish.[/edit]

Do you believe that I am a naked GI Joe coming out of a pink cake?

Was that an answer? Swansont is one of the most active and informative members on this forum, that you haven't seen wisdom from him indicates you haven't been looking. Also, personal insults don't really add anything but pettiness to the discussion.

Honestly with how copyright laws are it's easier for a site to just remove the content and then investigate later. That's how an entire section of the site retraction watch got taken down from it's server.

So you are saying I should follow the advice that is almost the same thing you argued against with swansont?

This discussion reminds me of something a professor once said to me. "If you want to do science don't expect a pat on the back every time you do something right. In fact, just don't expect to do things right. Assume everything you're doing is wrong. You will be surprised at how often you're correct."

Then you get the wonderfully circular logic of these types of things. If you don't want to be saved you are being misguided, thus you have to be saved. The thought process is similar to a parent making a child get a flu shot. A little hurt so it won't be as bad later on. If you truly believe in an afterlife that lasts forever, and religious authorities consider themselves parents, which is either permanent torture or eternal bliss (purgatory is for losers) then that little bit of torture is justified. Not saying it's right, just saying that it almost makes sense.

Actually, if you want to get technical, Natural Selection allows a more fit individual to reproduce more. So I could just be saying I want them to be sterile. Also, when using an idiom meaning is implied and does not have to be literal. Thus why an idiom is considered figurative language. But who wants to get technical when making a joke about a Creationist Museum.

If you look up publication rates in experimental journals I doubt your worry will have much substance.

I would honestly guess that it's because physics is one of the worst taught subjects in school (and I come from a place where evolution is frowned upon). People learn that Einstein got his ideas from thought exercises, Newton saw an apple fall from a tree, Ptolemy watched the planets move, etc. People think, "well I'm smart too, so my observations are just as relevant." They don't bother with the finding prior experiments or learning the math, because most of the time it's taught as analogies without math and doesn't teach the experimental validation that's the entire premise of the scientific method. What most of the physics speculations end up being is philosophical ramblings, not physics.

Most of the time it boils down to 'the ends justify the means'. If you truly believe you are killing/torturing/etc. a group of people for a short period in their lives to allow them peace and happiness for eternity you are helping them. That is the inherent problem when acting upon a belief such as an monarchic god in control of an afterlife. Any atrocity can be justified in life if it saves their immortal soul.

I feel the message there is that if you don't want mutant bacteria don't take antibiotics. I support this message in this 'museum' and hope it promotes natural selection, showing the survivors the way it works. Two birds with one stone.

So this entire thing is just for you bash other religions and to say people should convert to Christianity? Wouldn't an easier solution be for nobody to be religious, then religious tensions wouldn't arise. Also, if you really believe Jewish people secretly run the world it's probably not a good idea to tell them that you hate them. They are watching after all.

Like StringJunky said, behavior doesn't have to be pleasant to be adaptive. If banging your head into a wall repeatedly allowed you access to more mates that trait of banging your head would probably persist as long as you had time to reproduce. If all moths are attracted to light staying near a light source will increase the probability of finding a mate. Those that do not stay near a light source and will not mate, so the trait of avoiding light sources will not be passed on.

As Tim Minchin said If homeopathy works then feces is the best medicine because that has been diluted out of water more than any medicine you want to put in it.

Just to add to pwagen's response, you may want to look up homologous vs. analogous traits.

Usually test crosses are done with a homozygous recessive. That way you know in the F1 if the parents are homozygous. Do that with WT and you mutated strain. Then you can just cross those same parents with each other.

So you're purposefully obfuscating the issue? I'm sure everyone has considered this things, and I'm just as sure that their considerations on the matter are just as meaningless as the others. The answers are, everything that was true before you die is true after. You don't have an effect on reality's objectivity. Value and meaning are subjective, since you will be dead there will be no value or meaning after you die for you.

No, you are still equivocating. I get ready to for dinner based on prior evidence that I have had dinner and the trust that I will have dinner again. That is not faith as it is used in the OP. FFS, I don't even know what you're arguing against. Are you really saying that these people didn't die or kill for their faith? If that's not what you're saying you're not responding to what I am saying.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyr#Some_historic_famous_martyrs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult_suicide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_war etc

And that is a straw-man. I never said there aren't reasons for killing or dying, nor did I say those people killed or died to protect the ones they loved. I said they did so because they had faith they would be rewarded for doing so.

Because that's equivocation. People die and kill because they have faith they will be rewarded for it. If that's not 100% the difference is so minuscule that it doesn't really matter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=IZeWPScnolo#t=305s

Using that you could tell how well certain fibers hold up over time or if fibers tend to stretch or fray as well as how well different patterns in fabric hold up. This would tell you what fabrics to use or not use in the future while making clothes. This reminds me of grant writing procedures, take what you are studying and convince someone else it's useful enough to pay for. So why make up your own definition instead of the one that's commonly used?

Let's see the different sides of the argument. Emotion: Data: http://io9.com/5958187/what-happens-to-women-denied-abortions-this-is-the-first-scientific-study-to-find-out http://www.ansirh.org/library/publications.php#turnaway