Greg H.

I concur with the PM thing. It's really not necessary to discuss it in a public venue (unless, of course, she wants to).

Have you ever read David Hume's essay "Of Suicide"1? He considered the right to choose to end your own life to be as unalienable as any of the other civil rights we have come to know and enjoy (at least in the US). One of the footnotes in my copy of the essay mentions this: It doesn't mention if this was Pliny the Younger or Pliny the Elder, but we can safely say that the idea behind allowing self-termination in society dates back to at least the beginning of the second century AD, if not sooner (the Younger died sometime around 112 AD, according to our friend, the Wiki.) Hume goes on to say: The essay itself is a philosophical treatise in an attempt to prove that suicide, in and of itself, is not a "crime", though not strictly in the legal sense of that term. Hume uses the word to denote "a transgression of our duty, either to God, our neighbor, or ourselves." His aim, I believe, is to offer up arguments as to why suicide should not be considered a dereliction of those duties (and in some cases a mortal sin). ------------------ 1- I have no idea if this link references the entire essay or not. I have a printed copy from the following source, and I know the link does not include the footnotes (or at least not that I saw) that are included in my copy. Popkin, Richard H (Ed.). (1980). David Hume: Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and the Posthumous Essays. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co. ISBN: 0-9105144-45-X Edited to add a break between the reply and the footnote, as well as to fix some grammar issues. All that money on university level English classes - wasted.

I think this is the central question, and my opinion would be mainstream acceptance which is, in and of itself, a subjective measure (what counts as acceptance or mainstream).

I am going to nitpick here just a little bit. Technically, July 4 1776 was simply the date we declared independence. The current government the US has, based on the Constitution of the United States did not go into effect until 1789 after it was ratified by the states. Prior to that we had the Articles of the Confederation, which, as a form of government couldn't even get the states to pay their share of the national taxes, much less insure our continued existence as a country. See US Constitution - First Government section

For some definition of the word "closer" sure. But the fact is, given the size of the universe, it's probably more likely to put you further away from any planets at all, than it is to put you closer to a habitable planet than the Earth is. The reason that FTL travel is such a staple of science fiction/space opera type stories is that no one wants to read about how it took 8000 years to reach where the heroes were going and whatever they were going there for no longer existed. "Slow boating" at about half-c with some kind of cryogenic storage solution is certainly more plausible in terms of the science we understand, even if we don't have the engineering yet to support it.

While certainly effective at making use of words, simply repeating what you have said before isn't likely to convince anyone who wasn't already convinced. Neither will hand-waving and declaring questions you don't want to answer as off topic.

So if we both belong to the same thing it's a religious cult?

I'll concede that. It's a valid point - eventually our understanding of the natural world could become so advanced we have nothing left to uncover through science as we know it today. It seems fine to me. Am I missing something?

You seem to be going out of your way to be offensive and incite some kind of angry response with your ranting, so I will simply say this: All people, regardless of their espoused religious belief, or lack thereof, have the capacity to do the things you just described. Implying that all members of a particular group behave in such a manner is both a logical fallacy (since I have never sought to incite hatred of anyone nor do I possess the power to jail anyone), and down right insulting. Also, secular religious extremists seems a bit of an oxymoron to me, since secular is, by definition, non-religious in nature.

One thing to keep in mind is that cults don't have to be religious. They often are, but technically, a cult is simply the veneration of a person, ideology, or object. If fifty people sat in a circle around me all chanting about how I'm a super cool guy, and everyone should join the circle and idolize me, I'd have my own cult. I don't, for the record. I wouldn't know what to do with fifty brainwashed idiots anyway.

Faith doesn't enter into it. I don't need to have faith that a natural explanation exists - if one exists, science will, eventually, uncover it once our understanding and our technology catch up to the challenge the problem exhibits. This conclusion isn't based on faith, it's based on previous experience with scientific inquiry over centuries of human beings trying to figure out how the universe works. The only belief, if you want to call it that, is that the universe isn't obfuscated. It doesn't hide its nature, or operate under the arbitrary whim of some guiding influence. It runs under the guidance of laws that can be determined through observation and experimentation. But that belief isn't based on faith. It's based on the available evidence.

I don't disagree that it's available in certain circumstances. I even posted a link that showed where it has a practical application. However, that doesn't mean that it's generally available for use in all math, and outside of those proper contexts, writing anything in a div-zero format is going to get you some funny looks at best.

I knew mine was wrong before we started - I was using it to illustrate the reason division by zero is considered undefined. The fact that you didn't grasp the point behind my example leads me to two possible conclusions. A) You're being deliberately obstinate. B) You really don't understand what we're telling you. While I hope the answer is B, your continued refusal to accept even simple examples that you're incorrect leads me to believe my hope is in vain.

First, use the quote function properly. It's annoying when you don't. Second, I am glad you were able to spot the flaw in the math problem. Did you understand the point I was trying to make? (I'm guessing not, but hope is a virtue, even when it chances to be misplaced.)

In pure mathematics, because it gives you nonsense answers, such as the following: It's only useful is certain applications in computer languages to handle, as I pointed out before, floating point math correctly. Youc an read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_fallacy

Imatfaal, Athena defines this concept of The Law in another thread to which I have been replying. The definition is less than satisfying, but I will include it here for you. from http://www.sciencefo...ge__pid__679327

I disagree with part of what you're saying here. I agree that our understanding of morals can come from many sources. But morals are not necessarily laws, nor are all laws necessarily moral (just as an example, the Jim Crow laws of the post slavery period in the United States). Laws, in and of themselves, are a man-made construct which are only as moral as the people who write them. Morals, on the other hand, are an underlying framework of beliefs espoused by individuals (or societies) that, in theory join them together and make them function in a unified fashion. However, there is nothing to suggest (or at least nothing I have yet seen) that indicates that morals are in any way universal. Also, this idea that our best understanding of how the universe works can only come from a moral understanding of how god (or some other supernatural entity) works (I'll accept your premise that you're not discuss the God of the Bible - for now at least) is hard for me to swallow. The idea that we need to look for a supernatural source to understand the natural world presupposes the idea that scientific inquiry is doomed to failure unless it invokes this first cause that is both outside the realm of what we can observe and leaves behind no physical evidence of it's impact. It may not be a specific religion you're discussing, but it still sounds a lot like religious faith to me. And as far as I can tell, such faith is required neither to live a moral life nor to understand the workings of the universe, mysterious as they may be.

And dude, no offense, do your own research. I gave you a starting point - nothing more. And the theory of why they work is firmly grounded in science backed up with experimental (and practical) evidence. (Conversion of energy, etc).

Ask and ye shall receive. Wired Magazine Craig Venter This is one of the reasons that non-Creationists find arguing with Creationists so tiring. We get very tired of doing your research for you. This took me about 5 seconds to find using Google. A more in depth search (which I am not inclined to do for you) would most likely locate the published material.

Emphasis of the important bits added. And then let's add in the parts you decided to ignore: Semantic sophistry is the weakest form of argument.

Science is not based on presumptions. It's based on predictions which are then tested to confirm or deny their accuracy. The scientific community disagrees with you. And frankly, I'm just a smidge more inclined to believe folks who have been looking into this for years or decades than someone who only decided two weeks ago that mainstream science was wrong without coming up with a model that A) explains what we see in nature, and B) provides testable, falsifiable predictions for things we should see and haven't found yet. Do you even understand how the scientific method works?

Pulsars are neutron stars, though not all neutron stars are pulsars. And most of them simply fade out. They lose their rotational energy and become invisible to our ability to detect them. There's a few details here, though it's mostly a PR blurb for the Fermi GR Space Telescope. Neutron Stars (Fermi GR Space Telescope)

Actually, despite all those math classes we all took, in floating point calculations (based on the IEEE 754 standard) division by 0 is only undefined for [math]\frac{\pm0}{\pm0}[/math] and [math]\frac{\pm\infty}{\pm\infty}[/math] . It also (apparently) has some applications statistical math. You can read more at: Signed Zero (Wikipedia) Some of the salient bits:

Non-Newtonian fluids have always fascinated me. Anyone want to go walking on water with me?