Greg H.

My apologies. One such example would be consistently quoting people speaking as authorities outside of their fields of expertise. Like using Kent Hovind as your expert on evolution.

Isn't that Megatron's little brother?

I believe what they are discussing is what is commonly referred to as the fallacy of argument from authority. First, let's be clear, not all arguments based on authorities are fallacious. If my cardiologist gives me a recommendation about my heart, I'd fully expect him to know what he's talking about. If, however, he gives me a recommendation about neurosurgery, I would be well within my rights to conclude he might not know what he's talking about. In the book Logic Made Easy (D. Bennett, 2004), the author defines the fallacy of appeal to authority thus: An expert, by contrast, is typically considered to be someone who works in the field on a daily basis - Einstein, for example, would be considered an expert in relativity, and his statements and equations could be (and are) used to bolster points made in discussions on that field. However, I would not necessarily use his opinions to bolster a case of forensic anthropology, since his expertise in that area is not well defined (and most likely is non-existent).

Peter F. Hamilton used anti-matter drives in his ships in the The Night's Dawn trilogy, especially for ships that needed high thrust, like combat ships. You might take a gander at those books, if you have the time, as I don't remember the details of how they worked. From your proposal, I would suggest either dumping the plasma completely and venting the antimatter annihilation by-products directly as thrust (through a magnetic nozzle type arrangement) or using it produce electricity that is then tied into some kind of drive system (an ion drive, or something similar). You can see some proposed types of anti-matter rockets on wikipedia: Antimatter Rocket

Swan, I see where you're coming from, but I disagree specifically because the observation was included in the list of refutations. Had the observation been set apart, in it's own paragraph, I'd be more inclined to your point of view, but as it is written (intended by the other person or not), it comes off to me as if they are including that in the refutation of the argument, speaking to PMB's reasons for attempting to refute the argument in the first place. Again, that's just my opinion - take it for what it's worth.

In light of the text of the full post, I would say, yes, that was an ad hominem attack, since he clearly listed that as one of the reasons he was refuting your post. The context makes the difference. Edit - grammar.

To be precise, an ad hominem is an attempt to refute points in a discussion by attacking the person making them rather than the points themselves. As an example, "You're not qualified to discuss biblical history because you're an atheist, so everything you say on the subject is automatically wrong." is an ad hominem (and a fairly blatant one). The statement you quoted doesn't (to me) seem to fall into that pattern (unless there was more to the message than you quoted here). As I said, it seems more like an expression of their own feelings, which is perfectly legitimate, even if it does nothing to move the discussion forward. Words like "seemed" are the key to my interpretation - they're expressing an opinion, not arguing a statement of fact.

To me it doesn't feel like an ad hominem, since they really didn't argue any particular point. It feels more like an expression of frustration to me.

Continuing to argue a straw man fallacy, especially after it's been exposed already, makes you look very silly. The fact is, very simply, that you have been offered multiple refutations of your theory as well as multiple opportunities to provide verifiable evidence of it. You have failed to do so, and reverted to fallacious, insulting jabs that do nothing to prove your point. Saying that rejecting this proposal is rejecting reason and science is not a convincing argument (at least not to anyone serious about science and knowledge) - if you want to convince people, you need to stop preaching and start doing two things: Provide evidence that does not have a simpler explanation than "Aliens did it." I admit, the bar is high, but that ties directly in with the nature of the claim. Actually answer the refutations from others, instead of dismissing them with vague hand waving and insults. Until you are willing to do that, there's no reason for, or point in, continuing this discussion.

Your strawman is quite beside the point, and it's not even funny. The idea that an alien from another planet would be genetically similar enough to humans to produce a viable offspring is the part that's nonsensical. We can't even reproduce with monkeys or apes, and we're as close to them as we're ever going to be with any living organism. A human from another planet wouldn't be an alien - they'd be human, so no hybridization would take place - the offspring would be human.

To expand on this, think of like this. The "expansion" only happens at the level of galactic super clusters. Individual items, even individual galaxies are free to move closer together, as the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are currently doing. Additionally, the objects in the universe are not getting bigger. Envision how the Atlantic Ocean is currently getting larger due to the pressures from the mid-ocean ridge, slowly driving Europe and North America further apart. Yet neither continent is growing, only the space between them.

The first sign of crackpottery is usually "I have information they don't want me to share with you, and they keep changing all my submitted results to hide the truth." A world-wide conspiracy of scientists, governments, and the media seems just a little too far-fetched to me. The simpler answer is "You're wrong."

Chapter 4 of Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos spends a lot of time on the subject as well.

Well, from what I have read on the Morrill Act of 1862, the Poland Act of 1874, the Edmunds Act of 1882, and the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, here in the United States, it was simply an argument between the US Government and the LDS church - my supposition would be on the amount of clout the church was wielding in the western territories at the time, since two of those laws were aimed at directly limiting the amount of power a non-profit organization could wield and how much property they could own. In my personal opinion, based on my readings, the US government, fresh from the horror of the civil war, was very concerned by the amount of political power the Mormon church held in the western part of the nation. The government set out to undermine that power by enacting a series of ever more restrictive laws aimed directly at undermining that power base, and clawing that political power away from the church. Remember that before the start of Civil War in 1861, the US only had 33 states - the other 17 were tied up in large territories in the western portion of the country, and the Utah Territory, where the LDS church had most of its power covered all of Utah, most of Nevada, and parts of Nebraska and Wyoming. In my opinion, most of these laws came about because the US was simply afraid the territory would cede from the union before it ever became a state, and form its own (land locked) country inside US borders. See: http://en.wikipedia..../Utah_Territory http://en.wikipedia....Anti-Bigamy_Act http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Poland_Act http://en.wikipedia....iki/Edmunds_Act http://en.wikipedia....80%93Tucker_Act

That's something of a leap. If we can describe everything in the Universe, all we can say for sure is this is the Universe. There's no need to invoke a God of any sort, especially if that figure is indistinguishable from the Universe itself. And if we find the equation that describes life the universe, and everything, and there's no room for God, what then?

I'll concede that point. There are areas of science that (at least to my knowledge, someone with more experience in the field may correct me) can't currently be tested with the technology we have. However, those theories still provide testable predictions, even if we currently cannot test those predictions. The theory itself is falsifiable, even if the means to refute or confirm it does not yet exist.

It doesn't matter if you're discussing traditional theories or not. If matters not one whit if you're proposing that God is really Ralph from across the street - if you can't test it, it's not science, however hard you try and convince us it is.

I have to go with AW on this - sounds a lot like you're trying to describe particle entaglement, which has been observed in the laboratory between photons (which, if understand how you're using the the word, are luxons or massless particles that always move at the speed of light).

And some of the greatest minds of mathematics believed in Allah. So what? Belief is evidence of nothing, so why does it matter what some of the greatest minds in science believed?

Dissection of the eye would (presumably) reveal the presence of the tapetum lucidum, which humans (and many diurnal animals) do not have. That is, assuming the cat folk kept it during the evolution/design.

Evidence of speciation from the bible? I'll have to remember this one.

This is exactly the issue many of us have with your position. Science is not a matter of opinion. It's a matter of testable fact. If you can't test something, you can't possibly falsify it, and if you can't falsify it, it's not science. Black shoes or brown shoes with a navy suit is a matter of opinion (or taste), evidence of the existence of something is not. As it happens you have made a testable claim - Claim 1: Alien astronauts visited earth in ancient times. The problem is there's no evidence to support it aside from anecdotal evidence which, honestly, is not enough for science to support the idea. There is simply no physical evidence (that we know of) that any beings from any other world have ever visited this one. And you would think we'd have found some, if as you say, they helped us with such massive construction projects as the pyramids. Someone dropped a pocket knife, or a wrench, or had a refuse pile. And while we find plenty of evidence of people from those eras, including things as fragile as broken pottery, we find zero evidence that anything out of the era was present.

So then, contrary to your claim, it's a crackpot notion.

Then how can you make a scientific claim purporting that he exists? I can make all the claims I like, but if I can't devise a way to test those claims, they're not science.

As agnosticism is a religious point of view and not a scientific one, it's hardly applicable. Nice straw man though. And a scientific theory needs to be testable. How did you plan on testing for the existence of God, exactly?