Phi for All

So making them tax-exempt is merely to placate them, to keep them from plotting the overthrow of the government? I think money they take in that goes towards charity and upkeep costs should remain tax exempt, to keep separation of church and state. Funds that are used to expand/improve the ministries and pay salaries should be taxed.

! Moderator Note Do NOT hijack someone else's thread to promote your own. This is against the rules you agreed to when you joined. Also, please do yourself a favor and read up on what constitutes a scientific "theory". You are misusing the word here. Response to this modnote is unnecessary.

Define "answers". And "straight". And "dare".

We don't know. None have ever died. Seriously, the limb regeneration is only part of the equation. The real trick is to have cells replaced with new cells instead of slowly degenerating copies. I'll try to find the Scientific American article where they talked about this. Edit: Here's the article preview: www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=regrowing-human-limb

. If you choose a clear soda, you could dye it red/orange. Needs to be in the bottle, or with a restricted neck for maximum pressure. I like the way this guy set it up so the bottles are removable. Saves time filling a cemented-in bottle with soda. Messy but safe.

Even 50 years could be the equivalent of multiple advanced degrees. How much knowledge could a person potentially store and be proficient with? Imagine being a doctor/lawyer/scientist/professor who could install his own plumbing! Or would we instead have ultra-specialists, surgeon/researchers with 600 years of advanced experience and accumulated knowledge of surgical applications?

On December 25th, 1651, Massachusetts General Court ordered a five shillings fine for "observing any such day as Christmas". Merry Massachusetts!

Exactly, everything would be about immediate needs. Hopefully, with 1000 years of living to establish, we'd be a bit more forward-thinking.

Again, one has to wonder if we wouldn't start thinking more long-range if we knew we'd be around to see the consequences of short-sighted decisions based solely on convenience. Would we be able to struggle less to establish a living over 1000 years and have time to do something about observed corruption and injustice? I think the scenario would be different if only the privileged had access to such longevity. But if everyone could live 1000 years, free from senility and worries over health, I think our priorities would definitely change, and hopefully for the better.

On the other hand, if you had a lifespan ten times longer, you'd reach the point of "meaningfulness" much sooner in your life. You'd have the opportunity to learn ten times more, understand many more things, educate yourself in many more fields. Investments would have ten times longer to grow, illnesses wouldn't be the concern they are now. Risks might be viewed differently. Since we could regenerate lost limbs, teeth, and few traumas would be permanent, it might encourage more risk-taking, but risks that could result in death might take on new meaning.

Your source may be a bit suspect, since it's repeated in many herbal remedy promotion sites. From OSHA: http://www.osha.gov/...on.html Which still means there may be risks, but manufacturing processes are correctable.

It's also the methodology used. A way to make sure the discoveries you make are valid. A careful, precise, painstaking methodology that allows you to trust the conclusions you make. To use an analogy, have you ever done the NY Times crossword puzzle in ink? There are times when you think you know an answer, it's the right number of letters, it makes perfect sense, it may even give you a letter that works for another answer you think you know. But if you don't check every letter first, don't make absolutely sure your first answer was right, don't predict where this answer will intersect other answers, if you assume your answer is 100% correct and put it down in pen you could be making a mistake that will make all your other answers worthless. So science doesn't assume they have the answer "correct". They check the answer against everything that's gone before, and predict how that answer will fit in with future answers. That's how science discovers how the world works, and how you can trust its theories to be the best possible explanations. It IS different. The Amish aren't anti-technology, they just prefer to use their own power and that of their animals. No hypocrisy there. Mostly, they don't want to be dependent on technology. They don't want to rely on anything but themselves. I think they're allowed to use things like modern grease for their axles, and certainly use modern techniques for breeding and care of their animals and irrigating their fields. They believe dependence on technology reduces their community values, their reliance on one another to help get things done. That's the part I remember because that's the part I like best. I would love to participate in a barn-raising. Quite so. And I think these people are often guilty of hypocrisy in many other areas. Like the Christian fish and Pro-Life sticker on the bumper of the car that's speeding and weaving in and out of traffic. Or the ones who can sing Let There Be Peace on Earth or Bomb, Bomb Iran with equal zeal.

No, not necessarily. Technically, we have everything that a salamander has that lets it regenerate limbs, but we're in "scar" mode. Scarring was chosen for us because it closes wounds fairly quickly and lets us run away to heal from injury, rather than the salamander way of hiding out while regeneration replaces lost tissue and limbs. We're at a perfect place in our evolution to switch the scar mode off and switch regeneration on. We have nothing hunting us, we have no need to run away from predators. Regeneration, if it's possible for us, might not be such an expensive idea. And with our cells regenerating instead of copying themselves or scarring over lost limbs, we could live for 1000 years. Sure, things would change. There would have to be some kind of population control implemented. I don't think any mass executions would be necessary, just a limit on how many children people could have. I think the real question is this: If we lived ten times longer, would life mean more to us or less?

Oh, riiiight. Sure you do.

First off, I wouldn't call the microphone a "tool created by the white man". James West, a black man, did research on transducers that are used on nine out of ten microphones built today. He has 47 US patents and over 200 foreign patents on microphones and telephones. Second, the majority of Christians in the world accept many scientific theories. The Pope acknowledges Big Bang and Evolution. Only some shun technology, like the Amish, who openly declare their dislike for science. But I get the feeling you're talking about creationists, people who believe in only one book, and consider most of the evidence that supports scientific theory to be false. If they believe their god put oil in the ground for them to use, the fact that they reject science's explanation for how it got there doesn't make them hypocrites. Now if they think their god is responsible for the lights that go on when they flip a switch in their house, then I think they should have their utilities cut off. There are crackpots, not necessarily religious, who complain about Relativity but use their computers and GPS map service, and that seems hypocritical. I think the key here is to take everybody as an individual, and not group them all into categories so we can judge their actions based on what only a few do.

Are these people survival-trained volunteers or somewhat average, relocated citizens with random skill-sets?

Let's define this term, "absolute knowledge". Are you talking about knowing everything about everything, or are you talking about knowing the Truth about a specific subject? "Ruling out possibilities" and "absolute knowledge" seem to be the problem here. Neither one are truly skeptical concepts. They require you to assume your knowledge is perfect and complete. To me, skepticism says that I don't need to have absolute knowledge at all. It may exist but as soon as you assume you have it, you're no longer being skeptical.

The idea is that we'd have more money to spend if profit wasn't the main consideration. If we're focused on preventing or curing illnesses instead of alleviating their symptoms, there should be more money for research. I think the biggest problem with "government bureaucracy" is that half the people in government are working against its success. I offer the Bush II gutting of many programs and agencies as examples. It's easy to make "government bureaucracy" look bad when you cut it's funding and pull its regulative "teeth". That's another thing that should be fixed.

I think I get it now. You're claiming that there has to be ultimate truth that people CAN know. But you often seem to present this as "We, or even religion, MAY already know an ultimate truth, so we have to realize the possibility in order to remain skeptics". This is not skepticism as I see it. The rest of us are defining skepticism as the dictionary defines it, that we suspend judgement on whether something can be absolutely "TRUE", in favor of uncertainty, or accepting the best available explanation to work with.

Human society has advanced due to our intelligence, communication and cooperation. Helping ourselves by helping everyone prosper seems to be a noble, efficient and rewarding aspiration. I'd like to see some kind of Minimum Subsistence Standard adopted, to make sure everyone had food, clothing and shelter. It would have to be a no-frills kind of welfare system, that provided the necessities rather than the money to buy the necessities, to avoid abuse as much as possible. I'd like to see medicine become a not-for-profit enterprise. Everyone would have to give a great deal to see that all citizens received medical care, but I think medicine would change and become much cheaper if it were not-for-profit. I'd completely change the educational system. The current system is much too rigid, too based on outmoded styles and standards, and tries to be a one-size-fits-all solution. The criminal justice system needs to be completely overhauled as well. The US especially has many conflicts of interest going on with regards to prisons and sentencing. After lengthy consideration, I'd have to say that drugs need to be legalized. There are plenty of laws already in place that deal with being intoxicated in inappropriate circumstances, or providing intoxicating substances to minors. Manufacture them professionally, tax them and remove the criminal element from the process as much as possible. If someone wants to destroy themselves, they should have the right as long as it doesn't infringe upon the rights of others. I'm a bit dicey about any redistribution of wealth. There are some sectors that should be removed from the standard for-profit business model, like medicine, health insurance, prisons, and maybe even defense, but I'm reluctant to deny wealth to someone who has worked hard for it, or that society is willing to pay exorbitant funds to for whatever they do (yes, footballers, actors, etc.). Perhaps we need a system where ordinary people can get luxury items credited to them for work that benefits society as a whole?

! Moderator Note IamJoseph has been banned for multiple rules violations. It seems that waiting for him to answer questions was beyond his agenda anyway.

IamJoseph has been permanently banned for ignoring rules about preaching, not giving evidence to support his statements when requested, and denying valid evidence offered by others. edit (swansont) and thread hijacking

! Moderator Note OK, this is pointless. It's obvious that IamJoseph is simply denying every bit of evidence shown to him, and supporting none of his own arguments in a way that is consistent with the rules he agreed to when he joined this science forum. Occasionally we get creationists who are simply parroting what they've heard or been taught, but actually read replies that offer insight into the misinformation they've gathered to that point. These people sometimes concede that they really haven't delved into theories like Evolution or Big Bang enough to deride them the way they've been taught, and those discussions are meaningful in their helpfulness. However, when someone is simply denying every rebuttal, no matter how insightful, it's clear that no benefit is gained, and much time and energy is lost. I can hope that someone else will read the kind of dogmatic denialism that IamJoseph has displayed here and question whether shouting loud enough to drown out your detractors is a valid process for earning knowledge. Thread closed, good bye IamJoseph, sorry you chose to ignore our rules.

Since you only selected for intelligence, isn't there a risk you're wiping out something beneficial?

All religions make claims that are both plausible and implausible. I find none of them to be entirely either way. Nature may have some conditions or laws that work in all areas of the universe. We can't know until we test such knowledge in all possible areas. When such testing becomes possible for us, such knowledge may be possible. See the answer above. At our present level of knowledge and our capability to test it, I would say that nobody knows "the truth about the world" (which I read as Truth with a capital T). "Can" they know it? How would you be able to tell? I get the feeling you just want to paint my words into some kind of metaphysical, paradoxical corner rather than listen to what I'm saying to you. But then, I wouldn't want to presume to know what you're thinking. I'm not you, after all.