Mr Skeptic

I think it depends on what you mean by "elastic". Do you mean "bouncy" or "stretchy"?

Sure, but if you use that definition then you also have to consider belief in quantum mechanics a religion, and the belief that 1+1=2 is a religious belief from the religion of math. If you don't base your moral system on it, I don't think it can be called religion. Well that depends on how you define real, doesn't it? It's a real TV series with real fictional characters in a real fictional universe. It's no different than Euclidean geometry, which we also invented and can accept as an axiom system to deduce things that would be true if the axioms were true. And in any case, are you going to say that fictional characters can't have a religion because they're not real? Or what is your point?

Not true. For example, in the Stargate Universe, the Atlantians used a device called a ZPM, which as I understand it contained a universe inside it. Was there to be any life in that universe, their belief in a creator would be a correct, secular belief. In our universe we don't know if we can create universes or not, similar for some meta-universe that our universe might or might not have been created from. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to believe in a creator for our universe who is bound by the laws of physics, so that he wouldn't be divine. Alternately, I believe that my computer was made by a creator. Does that make me religious?

Would you be happier if you had a million dollars (which you could donate if you wanted to instead of keeping it, of course)? I for one would feel pretty good about myself if I donated a million dollars last year to charity. Should I believe that I in fact did because it would make me happy? Should I believe I will be given a beautiful beachside home in the Bahamas to live in when I retire, because that would make me happy?

It's a capitalist celebration of a pagan-based winter solstice celebration named after a messianic figure who probably has nothing whatsoever to do with it. What's not to like? It's a good holiday celebrated for a good reason. Let's play a game! Find the Christmas tree! Winner gets to pretend that Christmas trees have something to do with Christ. I'm only not annoyed when people get wasted if they aren't trying to interact with me. New Years or not, I don't really care. I do know a few people who like saying "happy holidays" or "x-mas" specifically to annoy that demographic.

Atheists enjoy vacation days just as much as any religious person does. IMO atheists shouldn't be offended by religious elements of religiously based holidays, but some are and some of the religious people are offended when the holidays aren't religious enough or that atheists participate. Almost all the holidays are now more secular than religious IMO.

Perhaps the children would prefer to be kicked out of the house whenever their parents want to have sex? I'm sure that would go over real well with the 1 year olds. Remember: it is traditional for parents and their children to sleep in the same bed. This whole thing about having more than one bed is a fancy new invention, one that our ancestors did just fine without. Perhaps you could even say that it is a product of materialistic waste, requiring a larger house (so more unproductive land), more raw materials to build it and furnish it, higher heating costs (both for the house as a whole and because when the whole family is sleeping together they keep each other warm very efficiently) -- and all of this at the expense of the children, who's stores of resources we're using up, producing more pollution than necessary with the consequent death and disease and environmental harm, and greatly contributing to global warming which will cost some of the children their homes to flooding and deserts, and a loss of biodiversity which may be needed to improve crop yields or create medicines. And then we pretend to them like sex doesn't exist, so they have to learn about it on their own from friends and porn, and don't feel free to talk to their parents about any of it. How can any of this be morally justified?

Oh, if you just meant a religious head of state, then that would be no problem at all. We've had one since the foundation of our nation.

80 meters per second seems absurdly slow for a ship. Given that the earth-sun distance is 1 Astronomical Unit = 149 598 000 000 meters, traveling that distance would take 59 years at 80 m/s. Of course a given speed is rather meaningless in space because it has to be relative to something, and considering the speed the earth is moving that would be tiny. What you have for speed for space ships is acceleration, and fuel is measured in how long each pound of fuel can provide a pound of thrust. The reason I said your ship would be slow is that carrying a sun around with them would mean the ship would have to be absurdly massive. You can't make them much smaller because then gravity wouldn't hold it together. But if you have something else to hold it together it is more like a fusion reactor than a sun. If you have a bigger sun, that would help with the warming of Titan. However, to make it habitable I believe the hardest part would be getting the oxygen into the atmosphere (and burning things would take you entirely opposite that goal -- you need to "unburn" things like plants would do). But if you're going to have oxygen in the atmosphere, all the methane has to go. You could burn the oxygen in the methane (oxygen would be more like the fuel since it would be the less common component needed for the fire, and the methane would be in the atmosphere), and while that would get rid of the methane eventually it would just mean you're wasting energy. Alternately, the methane could be collected into storage tanks before making the oxygen. The reason I say getting the oxygen would probably be harder is because of the heat released when burning things. A little fuel can heat a large amount of stuff, but to get the oxygen back you have to "unburn" something, and to do that you need to add the same amount of energy you get from burning back to the molecule (ie, the same amount of energy that could warm a large amount of stuff is needed to regain a little bit of oxygen), which usually also requires something to make the reaction go that direction since things don't naturally "unburn". What I really don't know is how to prevent the oxygen from recombining with whatever you split it off from. Maybe some hydrogen has to be removed from the planet or put into storage? Anyone know?

About national sovereignty... it is a necessary component of diplomacy. It means one country formally recognizes another country as a sovereign nation in charge of itself, and the leaders as the rightful leaders of that country. However, this is not automatic. Who dares recognize the sovereignty of Taiwan? China claims them as their own, and recognizing the sovereignty of Taiwan means that you deny China said sovereignty over that land -- which could probably be considered an act of war. Is Palestine sovereign? I'm pretty sure we in the US don't recognize the sovereignty of North Korea. Some countries are not recognized as sovereign by others and this creates great diplomatic tension. It is a very big deal recognizing sovereignty, or not, and doing so means you accept their rule even if you don't like all their laws -- and refusing to accept their sovereignty means you reject their right to rule. We in the US cannot without being hypocrites simply accept when peoples of other nations are repressed by their government. The least we can do is scold them.

What kind of microscope are you looking for, and what is your price range?

I too would say biology. We have millions of species with thousands of genes each, and all are interconnected to each other both at the genetic level and through the environment. And various chemicals affect the biochemical pathways. There's simply a lot to study, and we don't know all that much about it yet.

The sun emits light through a wide spectrum, but the planet emits infrared light or lower because it is cooler. The dust would block both visible and infrared light, so it would block sunlight from reaching the planet. Meanwhile, greenhouse gases block infrared light but allow visible light through. Considering the methane concentrations, the dust won't block any more infrared light than is already being blocked by the methane, so its only noticeable effect would be to block sunlight. Even on earth, dust cools the planet. As for any power plants on the surface, they'd be enclosed and so not emit in the visible spectrum either.

I'm pretty sure organic farming decreases productivity and increases costs. No-till farming can be used just fine with normal agriculture.

Soo, your ships of the future are slower than our current ships? The methane won't burn, you know. Not without oxygen. It is a good greenhouse gas, so maybe when you warm the planet more of it enters the atmosphere to help. As for orbital bombardment, it does generate a lot of energy but also a lot of dust. You might end up making it colder overall, especially if the dust takes forever to settle due to the thicker atmosphere. I'm not sure that's realistic. As I understand it, most of the material in these collisions gets vaporized. And I've never heard of "nearly pure titanium asteroids".

You'd need centuries to do it cheaply. The problem will probably be more the lack of oxygen than the temperature. However, maybe if you have fusion reactors you could build a lot of those to provide energy to electrolyze the water for oxygen, and provide the heating as well. It would still probably take centuries, but feel free to calculate how much energy would be needed.

Orbital mirrors to increase sunlight and warmth, and photosynthetic bacteria to make oxygen? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_%28moon%29#Atmosphere

Poisonous foods and rotten foods.

Not necessarily. There's infinitely many integers, and yet none are identical to any other integer, for example. To get infinite identical universes you'd need to show that there was a finite probability of a given universe.

There is one; I moved it there for you.

My advice is not to base your science fair project on a scam. No one has ever built a fusion reactor that can provide energy yet, although the hot fusion reactors have gotten to the point where they get more energy out than they put in, not counting the energy to create the reactor. The only cold fusion I've seen that isn't a scam is muon-catalyzed fusion, but that has an energy loss because muons are hard to get and they decay too quickly. Oh, and any website that titles itself "infinite energy" is probably full of scams. They always know so much about energy that they never build working energy generators and sell the electricity, because they know better than to try their own advice.

Back in post 13, you said: "I therefore think that (even though it's very inconvenient, and might cause a readjustment of power) the democratically chosen religious governments are the preferred option." (preferred to a dictator). If you check your own list, you find that about half those Muslim countries have a secular government, despite having a muslim majority. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theocracy#Current_states_with_theocratic_aspects They're not happy places (though not all of them are democies). Yes, that is how proof by example works. Are you certain that democratically chosen religious governments are always preferable to dictatorships? Because some of those can be quite bad, and even more so in theory. Religious freedom is just one aspect of this. What I was talking about was the freedom to think, and the freedom to express yourself. Hence why I was also talking about freedom of the press, not just freedom of religion. It is just that to obey Islamic law as you would expect an Islamic government to do, part of that law is to suppress other religions. Of course there is also the possibility that this gets ignored in practice. Perhaps this list better describes what I'm talking about here: http://www.cobourgatheist.com/assets/downloads/voice-accountability.pdf Consider Myanmar, rank 0 for "Basic freedoms, human rights abuses, free press, fair elections". Myanmar is, in theory, a Presidential Republic. North Korea also ranks 0, and is a single-party republic. Turkmenistan, with rank 1, is a Presidential Republic. Uzbekistan, rank 2, is a Presidential Republic. In fact, my guess is that pretty much all of the ones on the bottom of the list are some sort of republic or another, at least legally if not in practice. A democracy without freedom is indistinguishable from a dictatorship.

About 4.6 billion years ago. Improper question -- it contains incorrect assumptions built in. When have you stopped beating your wife? There need not be any "who", and a force no matter how strong would never help to do any of the above. Improper question. When did Hindus decide that eating cows was a good idea? The angular velocity of galaxies, solar systems, and planets was due to slight turbulence in the original clouds of gas, amplified by their contraction due to the law of conservation of angular momentum. Yes. This is known as Hubble's Law. Not unless you want to call anything that moves living. Part of what life is requires living things to maintain an internal environment with as little change as possible, despite changes in the environment. This is called homeostasis.

Nope. Theft is a secular law that is also enshrined in most religions. But you can tell it is secular because there is no god. "Don't steal" -- secular. "Don't steal from the house of God" -- religious. "Don't steal or god will punish you" -- religious. "Don't steal or the government will punish you" -- secular. Anything not involving god is secular by definition.

The heat death of the universe will kill everything that's not already dead. Unless there's some civilization that finds a way to leave the universe or change the laws of physics, they die of, essentially, starvation.