Mr Skeptic

So atheists say that god cannot be proven despite these "proofs", and you entirely agree with them. Sounds about right. My favorite is the inclusion of the deity's sacred text in the DNA of all living creatures and particularly humans, so that no one can doubt the authenticity of said text. Or at least that's what I would do if I were God rather than be a total asshole and expect people to believe something they have no evidence for.

That will depend on their rotational inertia as well. And gravity does not pull at a "speed", it pulls at an acceleration.

Limp and relaxed sounds like a terrible idea. You minimize the impact by minimizing the area of impact/drag, and being limp means you can't do that and the forces could pull your limbs in different directions increasing the drag on them yet more.

That is essentially what I've been telling you, combined with the fact that no one has ever proven the probability of the universe to be infinite is less than 10^-41,000. Do you then concede that the claim that the probability of life forming by chance is therefore nothing but mere speculation about, among other things, the size of the universe? If by "move on" you mean "change the context of what I mean by chance so as to equate the assumptions and conclusions made by Hoyle to those of every single abiogenesis theory", then perhaps we can move on to discussing the similarities and differences of the two. Right after you concede that the number of 10^-41,000 is nothing more than an argument from ignorance since you have no basis to calculate it due to not knowing the size of the universe. No changing the goalposts. You didn't specify "on earth" until after you already lost. And defending your argument from ignorance by calling my pointing out that you made an argument from ignorance an argument from ignorance isn't going to fly. Go look up "argument from ignorance" and you'll see that I am right and you are wrong. The argument from ignorance is assuming the universe is the size you want it to be because no one knows, and not the pointing out that we don't know its size and you are making an ignorant assumption by assuming it is finite. Now I'm not the sort that likes to simply claim victory in an argument, but avoiding the main point of someone's claim (your estimate is wrong because it doesn't account for the probability that the universe is infinite) for over 160 posts, seems like an acknowledgment of defeat if I've ever seen one.

Would that also result in a violation of conservation of momentum and conservation of energy? It seems if the bolded part could happen you could use it to turn something, and yet technically the negative mass would cancel the energy and momentum. Peculiar indeed.

I'm not sure what your objection is. A random process obviously can generate any form of information you like. Choose any digital information you like, and I will tell you the probability that a pure random process can generate it. Hint: it won't be zero. Therefore it is mathematically certain that a random process can generate said information. The purpose of the genetic algorithm is simply to increase the odds of generating useful information, and to separate the useless information from the useful (the genetic algorithm requires some information to play this role, but it is not identical to the information that it is to generate). But what if no one can tell the difference? It is also my point that data by any other name is still data. All you've done is assert some sort of difference that makes data not always information, but not give an example of such nor told how to tell the difference. Then that makes it easy to point out a proof that the theorems you want to use are applicable to your definition of information, since you say that someone has already done it for you. If you provide the links I'll search for "digitally encoded coherent functional information" myself, or you can point out where it mentions it if it uses other words. That is irrelevant. Unless you can show me who the "message" in DNA is addressed to, and how surprised they are at said "message", there really is no point in talking about messages in the context of life. Yes, but the protein information is analogue, and without functioning proteins there is no point in having the DNA. To be useful the information must be translated from digital DNA to analogue protein shapes. Source code, the compiler, and the resulting executable are indeed all digital, but that won't make protein shapes digital. Did you miss the last several times I mentioned a genetic algorithm?

Another option for transplants is to take an animal organ, strip it of the cells while leaving the appropriately shaped extracellular matrix (made of collagen, which is perfectly compatible), seeding it with human cells, and growing your own organ.

Would that be 1 light-second then? Or a light-hour? The answer will of course depend on the frame of reference (which will change the apparent speed of the cannon but not the "cannonball", and also the distance). But yes, after adjusting the distance and velocity changes (if you use a different reference frame), you should be able to use that formula.

Energy has a t^2 component, so reversing time won't reverse energy.

The differences you mention are not significant. Go with whatever you prefer.

Yes. I probably solved this differently than you did, but it turns out to be equivalent to the cannon and cannonball moving towards each other.

"Unfalsifiable" generally does not change with technology level.

Bacillus is singular, bacilli is plural.

Your data is your data. Sometimes you get noisy data and sometimes not as noisy. You can't just discard data you don't like.

It boils down to an argument from ignorance. However, we are far, far less ignorant than we were 200 years ago. An argument from ignorance works fairly well when there is little we are ignorant of. While it is not definitive proof that these things are impossible, it is definitely enough to make me doubt their existence.

Some people interpret the Flood story to be literal and historically accurate. Such people are wrong. What the flood story says about genetics, is how many of each type of animal was on the ark and that the others died, which with current knowledge about genetics means the flood story says something about genetic diversity -- a bottleneck of 2 or 7 individuals, 4000 or so years ago. This makes verifiable predictions about what genetic diversity we should see, and the predictions are wrong. As you said, it is nothing more than a story, despite some treating it as revealed truth. We assume that the laws of nature are stable. There is no way to prove it.

Perhaps. If you plug a negative mass into the gravity equation, you'll get repulsive gravity. The only place I've seen gravity repulsion is with "dark energy" but no one knows what that is, much less how to manipulate it.

Evolution consists of two parts: 1) Descent with modification. 2) Natural selection. Without a self-replicator, you are missing the first component.

Where did I make an appeal to ignorance? I said as much several times, including in the post you quoted to start this thread.

Why does it matter whether the genetic algorithm contains information? You're making a really big deal about something that doesn't matter. A genetic algorithm can produce many many functional designs. Add them all up, and the genetic algorithm can produce more information than it itself contains. Therefore, it must have generated the additional information. Well, I shall give you an example. Suppose Bob defines information as a red-skinned fruit with white flesh of the Rosaceae family (ie, an apple). Do you suppose Bob can use the theories you mention to talk about his idea of "information"? No, whenever someone makes a new definition they need to show that whatever theorem they wish to use apply to that definition. This can be done either by showing the definition is in fact identical, or that the theorem still holds. It is hard work and usually people simply use the theorems with the original definitions. I see. This would be unlikely to result from a genetic algorithm -- while the designs genetic algorithms produce work well, they are often baffling to a human. A similar effect can be done by the famous coding while drunk, where the resulting program usually works but the person who wrote it usually has difficulty understanding it. Likewise, two different people might disagree on this. This strikes me as a subjective requirement. Also, DNA is generally not considered orderly, logical, nor aesthetically consistent, so this definition would have limited applicability when talking about life. Nice and clear. The base pairs are irrelevant without the proteins. Proteins have a digital sequence, but their folding is analogue, and what really matters is the analogue positioning of the groups at the active site and any binding sites. The information necessary for life is not digital.

Yes, from well before we were human. This is why the same pattern is seen in other species, as unlikely as that would be to happen were they not modified copies.

He meant what he said. An unfalsifiable statement cannot be proved false, whether it is true or false. An example would be Nostradamus' "predictions" of the future. These "predictions" are vague and metaphorical, so that you could never see for sure whether it happened or not. If something happens that is more or less a close match to his "predictions", a certain class of people will proclaim that Nostradamus has predicted that event. However, were that particular event not to have happened, they would not have proclaimed his predictions false. And that is the problem -- it becomes a one-sided thing, where only evidence "for" would count but there can never be evidence against. At this point, a scientist would say that the evidence "for" cannot count -- it is not real evidence -- if there cannot be evidence against. If I say "in the year of the great winter, the dragon shall attack from the north" then to measure how well I predict the future you would have to know how likely that is to happen and how likely not to happen. So someone will attack someone in the winter, no time limit. This can never be proven wrong since it could happen 1000 years from now, for example, and then if someone still remembers those words they might act all surprised and say I predicted the future. Whereas a scientist would say the statement was unfalsifiable and so meaningless.

Emphasis in the original. As you can see, Ophiolite's definition of atheism fails quite horribly as it doesn't cover a large chunk of the population of atheists. Those who are not theists are atheists; it's that easy. So a deist would be an atheist by some definitions And "apathetic" is someone who is not "pathetic".

In other news, recent gallup polls have shown that more people are in favor of the death penalty than there are in favor of animal testing or wearing fur.

Water cooling will only help if what slows down your PC is overheating. Also with a homemade water cooler you run the risk of destroying your computer. If heat is your problem get rid of the dust in your computer and add more fans.