Mr Skeptic

Sugars can also be produced by abiotic natural processes. For example, the Urey-Miller experiment made sugars, and sugars are found on some meteorites.

Various DNA similarities can only be explained by having the creatures be modified copies, unless you are a believer in absurdly unlikely coincidences.

Volts. Lots and lots of volts. Also, humid air conducts electricity better than dry air, and maybe the raindrops themselves could help. In any case, once a little current flows there is a path of ions which improves the conductivity allowing yet more current to flow.

In practice such a system is too big to be treated quantum mechanically. You'd calculate the emission spectra of the sun, then subtract based on the quantity and substance of the gas and dust clouds.

11.1) I think the mechanics of your problem are a little off, since from the description it would seem I'd be going double the speed limit or more to guarantee death. I think a better situation would be on a high bridge with one lane, a divisor, and a weak guardrail. But if I understand your problem, it is that a person through negligence puts you in a situation where you must choose between your life and theirs, in such a way that non-action on your part will result in their death more or less at your hands. In this case, I would probably not swerve, since the situation is their fault. For a pregnant woman (two lives) or a very young child (doesn't know better) I might sacrifice myself. 11.2) In reality, there is no other option than to charge the driver with manslaughter (not murder) if they kill someone. I think that the jury should find him not guilty due to extenuating circumstances. 11.3) The pedestrian should be charged with some crime, not murder though.

If evidence should exist but does not, that is contradictory evidence rather than absence of evidence.

Depending on how you do the math, the energy of the universe is zero.

Scientology is secretive enough and sufficiently morally dubious that wikileaks has a whole category dedicated to them. Maybe you want to read up on some of their secrets before joining them? http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Category:Scientology

But how many of these miracles does Thor have to do before people will believe in him?

From an observer on the cannon, v=0 for the cannon, and the cannonball still moves at c.

Ah, so the question is where is the line between ancestry and evolution? There isn't really one. You could say it is when the ancestor and descendant are different species, but there is no dividing line between two species. So really its up to personal preference.

When the two creatures are are not on different branches of the phylogenetic tree.

It's more properly known as "chirality", but it is the equivalent of your right and left hands at the molecular level. Basically, they are mirror images such that the mirror images are different.

Cypress, from what I see your objections are basically as follows: 1) The algorithm contains information or "design". 2) Man-made genetic algorithms also contain optimizations. 3) Genetic algorithms use some functioning components as their ingredients. And furthermore, an acknowledgment that the existence of such an algorithm essentially guarantees the results. 4) The algorithm by its nature guarantees success. Please tell me if I missed any. My answers: 1) Yes, genetic algorithms contain information. So does evolution. In any case, it doesn't matter where the information comes from, only that it is there, and once the information is there the algorithm will function regardless of its source. 2) Optimizations are not necessary, only useful for reducing the amount of computational power needed. The same or similar results can be gotten without the optimizations by simply taking much longer. 3) Evolution presupposes functioning life, and life also has some functioning components it can rearrange or modify. As for 4), I find it intriguing how you can simultaneously hold that the result of genetic algorithms is inevitable and yet deny that the original one can function.

It's a proof by negation. You assume something you want to prove false to be true, then you show that assumption leads to a contradiction, which means it is false. That of course only applies to a literal interpretation.

Yes, light intensity has no reasonable upper limit. I think at some extreme intensity it would start turning into particle-antiparticle pairs which would limit the intensity. But you won't ever see anything that bright, nor accidentally make anything that bright, so for all intents and purposes you might as well consider there to be no limit to brightness.

Yes, and also angular momentum is conserved just like energy and regular momentum. Yup, the moment of inertia can change but angular momentum will be conserved and this will change the rotational velocity. Yup, friction and drag will slow down both motions simultaneously. However it could be by different amounts, which would largely depend on the properties of the object.

So life is made from chemicals with specific handedness. But as far as I know, it should in theory work just as well with all the handedness reversed. I'm not sure if we could actually make one though, due to technological difficulties. If we could make life with the opposite handedness, how would you go about making it? And a related question, could we eat the result?

Unfortunately, solving this for you won't help you. I can almost guarantee that a similar (but almost certainly different) synthesis will appear on your test. Try to break it down as much as you can. You need at least two reactions that add carbons. Which do you want to do first, and if it matters, why?

Oh, because he included the word "living"? Well, just because he said "living molecules" rather than "organic molecules such as those used by living organisms" doesn't mean that any half-way intelligent person can't understand it. Anyhow, I can and have made DNA outside of a cell, how's that for extracellular metabolism?

Math is more certain than reality. That you insist on something less reliable rather than something more reliable shows you are not interested in the truth, but rather in playing games. If you have trouble believing things that are more certain than your own existence, that is your problem, not mine. As I said, a random number generator can generate any information you specify, and I can give you the odds that it will generate it. Or are you questioning the existence of random number generators? If you cannot accept the truth, then why do you pretend to seek it? What is not speculation, is that you have not despite several requests, failed to provide an example of data that is not information. This is evidence that you are purposely avoiding the issue, which is often due to being wrong about it and not wanting to admit it. I searched these and none of them contain the phrase "digitally encoded coherent functional information". Sorry. So then you admit that I am right, that information need not be a message? Your code will work just fine whether connected to the analogue systems or the information is just sent to /dev/null. The output of your code, incidentally, is digital. Nope, the genetic algorithm does not care about the intentions of the programmer. As you say, though, the results are essentially inevitable, which is excellent evidence for the power of evolution. This is why there can be so many arguments about evolution without even looking at the data -- simply understanding the process itself is powerful evidence in its own right. Whatever you may think about man-made genetic algorithms, the original one was not designed by humans and follows from the laws of nature. Some people do think the laws of nature were designed, but that's a different argument.

Building the mosque has to be allowed, of course, and we should also do our best to prevent people from burning it to the ground after it's built. Religious freedom applies to everyone and to all religions, not just the ones we like.

I'm all for replacing the immigration quotas with a sort of quality control.

It is actually fairly common. In a sense we are a sort of "protein crystal", which is an elegant solution to the necessity of self-repair. Well that's simplifying things a bit, but the point is that natural forces result in self-assembly and self-stabilizing of many of our parts. Bipolar molecules such as the phospholipids of our membrane can naturally form membranes, and once formed natural forces stabilize them. As for the "protein crystals", collagen, keratin, elastin, tubulin and fibroin self-assemble into certain shapes due to the same sort of forces that shape crystals. The beauty of this is the simplicity, so that controlling the concentration of the components can be used to grow or shrink some structures, rather than having some obscenely complicated mechanism to do so. Viruses often entirely self-assemble from just their parts. Life itself can be taken apart and put back together, and no one really knows exactly the dividing line between "living" and "non-living". Personally, I think no such line really exists and the meaning of these terms depends on the context. Anyhow, if you want more info, search about self-assembly. Ask a biology undergrad, odds are they have done this themselves. PCR, for example, which I have personally done several times. That says nothing about reality, although from my observations it seems immensely relevant to your ego.