JohnB

No switching allowed. Whether a human has a normal intellect or not they are still human. The analogy fails. Your analogy also refers to "the actions of their animals if they cause damage to property". Unless the mouse is someones pet it is not property. If it is a pet, then yes there is an ethical duty to save it from the cat, otherwise tough luck for the mouse. Nobody here has argued that "animal suffering is recognized as such a significant moral problem that we must avoid causing any animal suffering in the choices we make", simply that suffering should be minimised. If an animal needs to be put down and there is both a fast and slow way to do it the fast way should be chosen. For a simple example. During the filming of a movie some years ago in the Victorian mountains a horse broke its leg. This meant that the animal had to be put down. The vet would take some time (about 2 hours) to reach the site so a roadie used the back of an axe between the horses eyes. The argument being that waiting for the vet to come and deliver the injection would cause the animal unneeded suffering. Animal rights people tried to make a case and failed. They called the method "brutal and barbaric" however the consensus was that it would have been more brutal and barbaric to allow the animal to suffer for 2 hours needlessly. Rather than being about not causing any suffering to an animal, it's about not causing needless suffering. CaptainPanic, I hope to be in Heaven just long enough to give Noah a serious beating for taking the damn things with him on the Ark. Might I suggest that it is equally as satisfying to see just how thin a smear you can make them? To see a mosquito turned into a large and very, very thin stain on the wall has great therapeutic benefits. Your adversary is not merely killed but virtually unrecognisable as ever being a living entity.

In 2008 the Russian Academy of Sciences sponsored a large gathering to commemorate the 100th Anniversary of the Tunguska Event. Papers were presented on a range of topics from being about the actual event to the likelihood of another and mitigation strategies. Unfortunately the papers were presented in Russian, but the complete list and the Abstracts in Russian and English can be found here. http://tunguska.sai.msu.ru/content/abstract_all.pdf Many are rather detailed for abstracts and the whole do present an interesting and informative read as to the state of the science as of 2008. The Russians seem to be taking the threat more seriously than in the West given the content of the papers and the hosting by the RAS of the website for the Holocene Impact Working Group. The ideas put forward by the HIWG are quite scary.

Firstly I would caution against generalities. Not picking on you Marat, but your comment makes a good example. Have people read the Hindu, Bhuddist and other literature, or do they just generalise from a dislike of the Christian Bible? I certainly grant that if someone comes knocking on the door, they are probably a Christian sect, but if the other literature hasn't been read, how can one know that it is unimpressive? Secondly, only those who have done door to door work know how really hard it is. Whether you're selling religion, a new phone plan or home improvements, it's a hard slog and those who do it are worthy of respect for the sheer amount of effort involved. Queensland in summer is bloody hot and I make sure to always offer refreshments to doorknockers. There is nothing wrong with a little kindness. Thirdly, the JWs have earned respect for their conviction if not their religious views. They went to the gas chambers with many others for refusing to join the army. They takes the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" very seriously and are willing to be persecuted and killed rather than go with the flow to save their own skins. Lastly, the Atheists will earn the right to complain when we see "Atheists International" getting in there with a helping hand after a natural disaster like the Salvation Army do. Or helping the down and out, or any number of other things. It strikes me as the height of cognitive dissonance to complain about "religion" and at the same time ignore the very real good and needed work that religious organisations like the Salvos do. Work that no "atheist" organisation does. Has there ever been an atheist soup kitchen? Where are the atheist counterparts to Mother Theresa? The Cold War raged through the 20th Century but when a disaster struck who were always there to give a helping hand? The "religious" Americans or the "atheist" Soviets? All forms of thought probably have both up and down sides. What is wrong with accepting the minor inconvenience of the occasional knock on the door as a small price to pay for all the good that many of these organisations do? I should add that my own beliefs place me in the generic category of "Witch", so I have neither current nor historical reasons to particularly well disposed towards christians, but I'll line up beside the Salvos any day, for any fight.

Save you money. Just quietly comment to a few people down at the local shopping centre "Don't you think he pays a lot of attention to children?" Local gossip will finish the job. Note that I never said or implied anything, I simply asked someone elses opinion. Unethical as hell, but not illegal.

Nicely put.

Mate, don't beat yourself up. I too am balding, overweight and older. (I like to think I have retained the rugged good looks and dashing countenence of my youth though. ) And neither of us is senile. The boffins and us unlettered ones often don't quite speak the same language. I've just been around long enough to be able to function as interpreter sometimes. Because you think and ask questions, you'll be doing the same thing before too long. One of the big things I've learned is to automatically insert "Well our current, best theory is...." in front of any answer to questions about gravity, magnetism or electricity. Cheers.

Rigney, what swansont was saying is this. By obseving the orbits of planets we can see that they require a force that reduces by the square of the distance to have the orbits they do. Magnetism reduces by the cube of the distance. Therefore it can't be magnetism. This is what "trivially falsified" means in this case. Think of it like a police investigation. You have the weapon and 10 suspects. The weapon can only be used by a right handed person. One of your suspects has no right arm. Therefore he can't possibly have used the weapon. So the idea that he is the killer is "trivially falsified" and he is eliminated as a suspect. You don't need to know anything else about any of the suspects except that one fact for a "first round" elimination of suspects. For similar reasons magnetism is eliminated in the first round when considering orbits and gravity.

Lemur, I didn't think at all that you were showing disrespect. Clauswitz famously said "It is clear that war is not a mere act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means". By remembering the cost of that "other means", we strive to avoid it, or if unavoidable to minimise the cost. At least, that's how we see it down here. The thing is that I do see WW2 in Europe as the direct result of the ending of WW1. However I think that you are neglecting an important factor. The Treaty of Versailles was tremendously unfair to Germany and pretty much everybody knew it. It was not so much the economic deprivation that gave the nazis a chance, it was the unfair treatment. Economic deprivation was a symptom and a daily reminder of how shabbily Gremany was treated. It was this constant reminder of how a great nation was brought low that generated the anger, not the economic situation. Their industrial base for the economy was removed, limits placed on their economy at every turn and on top of that, massive reparations had to be paid. You can't expect people to pay reparations if you remove their economic base and ability to generate income to pay the reparations. Remember that it was France that invaded Germany in 1922 to occupy the Ruhr when Germany literally did not have the money to pay the reparations. Given all this, are you really surprised at the rise of a reactionary regime a mere 11 years later? You'll note that the lesson was learned for WW2. Rather than beggaring the losers, we rebuilt them, their governments and their economies.

My first thought was to call BS on this, but I realised that I don't know where you are. Your conclusions may be right for where you are but they don't apply to the antipodes. We remember the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month to think on the tremendous loss of life in WW 1. We remember the 25th of April to remind ourselves that freedom isn't free and that many Australians paid in blood for the society we have today. By remembering the price paid we motivate ourselves to strive not to repeat the same mistakes, tempered by the knowledge that sometimes blood is required. During WW 2 America was never under threat of invasion, we were. Our cities were visited regularly by aerial representatives of the "Greater Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere". The only reason the invasion never happened was because of the ANZACs holding onto New Guinea and depriving the Japanese of a staging point. They fought in terrible conditions and endured and did terrible things to hold on. We remember their sacrifice to protect us and our nation. Economics has nothing to do with it. Marat if that is true than perhaps people didn't learn the right lesson from history. I've always thought that the correct lesson to learn from Pearl Harbour is this "If you turn your back on a warlike opponent, they will boot you in the arse" which is a trueism both militarily and historically.

Speaking as an australian, the answer to your questions is "No". Rabbits are an invasive species and we would generally dearly love the little bunnies to drop dead. We use guns and dynamite for preference because even though we've had mixo for decades we view this as in humane and only used as a last resort. The point is that the methods we use, even though we want something gone tells more about us than the thing we are eradicating. We might want it dead but that doesn't mean we want it to suffer on the way. There is a great moral difference between pest control and outright sadism. I'm no animal rights freak and I don't think they are comparable to humans, but allowing for a flexible morality based on whether or not you dislike something is something I find a very bad idea. Why not conduct experiments on death row inmates? Everybody wants them gone and they are going to die anyway. You could respond that animals aren't the same as humans or that this is a slippery slope argument, but the fact is that every argument you put forward can be used to justify (in)human experimentation. Add to that the simple fact that some sectors of human society do indeed equate other humans with animals, even in relatively modern societies and you have a recipe for abuse. The bottom line is that any behaviour allowed towards animals will be applied to humans with exactly the same justification. The only ethical answer and way to avoid the situation is to not allow the experiments in the first place. The question is not so much about certain animals over others, but a more general "What ethical constrainsts should there be when the percieved value of the subjects life is zero?"

Two cents from the outside. You could get a lot of savings by getting better bang for your buck. As was pointed out long ago in the healthcare debate, you spend far more than everybody else for worse outcomes. Australia spends $1,714 per person compared to your $4,271. We have more doctors, nurses and hospital beds per 100,000 people than you do, with lower mortality and higher life expectancy. Dental and glasses are handled by private insurance, but we are looking to expand in that area. So exactly what are you getting for your extra $2,500 per person per year? Nothing, except some sort of warm, fuzzy for not being as "Socialist" as we are. Well if warm fuzzies are worth the $750B every year to you then great, but don't then complain that you "need to reduce spending" or argue about which programs should be "cut". Inefficiencies like this are costing every man, woman and child in america $50 per week. Is it worth it? Look at how the ROW does things and if they get a better result from a different system, then why not adopt it? chances are that you could slash Trillions off the budget and yet not "cut" a single program.

How do you work that out?

Xittenn, most of us would go "You Beauty". But there are large numbers of the population whose beliefs are directly threatened by the existence of aliens. We in the West have been conditioned for 2,000 years that we are the ultimate creation. Humans are the pinnacle. The simple fact that others exist and can come here would relegate our science back to the Dark Ages and our place in the Universe to "primitives". America unfortunately has a reasonable number of fundamentalists. To these people there are three and only three types of life in the Universe, humans, angels and demons. Aliens do not fit into their worldview at all and they would probably be rather unhinged should they be faced with the reality. They might even attempt violence and trigger a war. Such a war we could not win. We could not win strategically because while they can attack us, we could not attack their homeworld. We could not win tactically because "You can't win a rock throwing contest from the bottom of a well." If they can come here in reasonable time, ie have FTL travel then I don't know how much of our physics would need a rewrite but I would guess a lot. I suspect this would have damaging effects on the psyche of many physicists. Relativity is probably the best theory in the history of science and to have it mangled so easily would upset a lot of people. Religions would be afraid of alien philosophies and religions. Politicians would be afraid that people might demand changes to political systems once the alien ones are known. Many would be afraid of losing their jobs to superior alien production technology. The list is very long once you think about it. Similarly Roswell. Let's assume for the moment that it really was an alien ship. The US military had no option but to cover it up. If during the Cold War such technology had fallen into the hands of either side and the fact announced, then a nuclear holocaust would have immediately followed. If such technology was in American hands the Soviets would have known that given the time to reverse engineer the ship the american position would become unassailable. What hope would Mach 2 Mig 23s have against american bombers doing Mach 15? The only possible response would be immediate war to prevent the Americans from having the time to use the technology. The reverse position is also true. If the Soviets had such tech, the only hope of the West would be to smash them before they could develop it. For both sides it would be a case of "War now while we have a chance, or war later when we have no chance." Bluntly, there are many good reasons such contact would be covered up.

I found this clip while looking for a different one and thought it too good not to share. At least the Turkish consulate were too smart to fall for the same trick again.

John, sorry if my post seemed aimed at you, it wasn't really. I did quote you for the start, but the comment was meant in a much more general fashion. Too often things get filtered through the American perspective without the understanding that this is neither the only, nor neccessarily the correct one. This is endemic around the web and crosses all topics. While it's funny at first to be accused of being a Rebublican or listening to too much Glen Beck, I'm Australian and Beck isn't on TV here, after a while it gets very frustrating. It unfortunately also reinforces the widespread ideas that Americans know zilch about other nations and aren't interested in any opinions but their own. While your post was the "trigger" the rant wasn't directed at you personally and I apologise for writing in such a way that it would appear so. I expressed myself poorly and I'm sorry for that. If a large percentage of Americans believe in special creation, this is an indication that the American school system leaves much to be desired, but it doesn't really shed any light on the relationship between science and religion in general. A lot of people don't understand what they say they believe, this isn't restricted to religion. I suggest it is similar to politics. Someone might describe themself as supporting one party or another, but when it comes down to the nitty gritty, they will often disagree with the party policy. For instance many support the Australian Greens, but I bet they've never read the policies. I thought this bit rather good, they will; "require uranium mining companies to meet enforceable standards to safely contain and to monitor their radioactive tailings wastes for at least 10,000 years." If you quizzed the Greens supporters, how many would think that laws for the next 10,000 years are actually writable? It's the same thing. The vast majority of the Christians and other religious people I've met have no problem with the age of the Universe or a problem with evolution. If anything these things increase their sense of wonder at the sheer size and complexity of creation. Rather than feeling somehow special, they feel humble when considering the vastness, magnificence and sheer beauty of the Universe in which we live. I'm neither a Christian nor religious. I do think that there is a creator for this Universe and I fervently believe that it will be the advancement of the physical sciences that will allow us to eventually understand it and perhaps even communicate with it. Just because some religions, or some of the interpretations of some religions contradict science doesn't mean that all religions do or that all religious people do. Very broad brush strokes really don't work all that well.

Agreed. I think the major difference here is that the NT was written in a much shorter time span, a couple of hundred years or so. The OT was word of mouth for a good thousand years before ever being put to paper and even then it would appear to have collected gradually. I find the lack of Latin surprising, but this isn't really my area or era. It's a bit too recent for me. I would have thought that the Roman occupation would have given its edicts in Latin rather than the local dialect. Also, IIRC, the mosaics from the very early Christian churches in the region were in either Greek or Latin. I don't remember seeing Aramaic script in the early churches. I'm not saying it's not there. I just skim those articles because my interest lies more with the Babylonians, Sumerians, Hittites and Egyptians so I might simply have missed it. Can I suggest to you a magazine called Archaeological Diggings? An Australian mag published by archaeologists who specialise in the ME region, often with a view to Biblical Archaeology. I've been getting it since Issue 1 and it's a great read, especially the "News" section with quick wrapups on the most recent discoveries. They also organise dig tours which I hope to join at some point.

Cap, I don't doubt what you are saying about the NT, my point is that those factors aren't the same for the OT. A totally different society. The factors pertaining to the writing of the NT are simply irrelevent to the OT. On the side. Why would Aramaic be the likely choice over Greek? Since those who write are the educated scribal class they must have been taught somewhere. The major influence and best schools for 300 years were in Ptolomeic Egypt. It reasonably follows that the majority of scribes were taught either in Egypt or by Egyptian trained teachers. In both cases a training in Greek would be par for the course. A scribe who couldn't write Greek would have no hope of getting any government work and the possibility of general business would be curtailed. By the time of the NT, I would think that the most common written languages were Greek and Latin, reflecting the two most influential societies in the region.

Most people would rather the whole idea went away. It challenges their beliefs about their exulted place in the Universe.

imatfaal, I am aware of that affair. I have no problem with the pendulum swinging far enough to wipe post moderism from the face of the earth. I'll happily call BS when I see it and post modernist interpretation is BS.

Why does everything come down to what some yanks in the Bible belt think? America is not the entire planet and frankly it's bloody boring to see so many topics get judged on some bloody gallup poll from the States. When discussing what Christians do or don't believe how about getting this fact nailed on a wall. Americans are the minority. Just because you have a p*ss poor education system that finishes up with 1/3 of the population believing in special creation doesn't mean that the ROW does too. For that matter people should stop reading so much into polls FFS. Yeah, a poll says that 30% believe the Bible is literally true, until it is put to the test. Had a rash of parents stoning their children to death for being rude have you? Regardless of what the poll says it is not reality. Bringing up these sorts of polls are possibly the biggest strawmen I've ever seen. Here's what happens when people who think the Bible is literally true get put to the test. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95hH1H5qK08 The comment on the youtube page sums it up pretty well. By all means discuss religion and science, but for Thors sake stop trying to paint every Christian or religious person as some extreme fundamentalist whacko. It is pointless and insulting. If Americans have a fundy problem, then solve it. Stop trying to project it onto everybody else because we don't have the problem. Fundies make up a very small (and getting smaller) percentage of our population and they are laughed at, not listened to.

You're talking about the time of the NT when there were many scribes and a goodly percentage could read and write. I was talking about the OT time when people who could read and write were restricted to the ruling class and scribes. There's at least a thousand years between these two times. In preliterate times the storyteller was valued much as a good joke teller is. If someone is a good joke teller, you will happily sit back and listen even if you know the joke word for word, and you will laugh well at the end. It was sort of the same thing. The people knew the stories and knew them well but everybody enjoyed sitting back and listening to someone tell the story really well. Because of the audience familiarity with the story there wasn't a lot of latitude for embellishment. There was certainly some room, but the storytellers had to keep pretty much to the script or else the story was no good. Lemur, it sounds like you are describing the post modernists version of history and historical texts. Sorry mate but that is the biggest load of crock I've ever had the misfortune to meet. It defies all logic and sense. It denies all fact and substitutes opinion and interpretation instead. Post modernist history is to Archaeology and History as Astrology is to Astronomy. One is science, the other is mumbo jumbo. So D-Day possibly wasn't on the 6th June 1944? Or am I misunderstanding you?

Sorry John, but no. Archaeology is a science, it has nothing to do with belief. One of the common misconceptions is that there is a shortage of documentary evidence from the early civilizations. This is simply wrong. For every one of the Tablets of the "Epic of Gilgamesh" (The Sumerian story the flood legend came from) more then 10,000 others were found at the same site. Many, many more have been found since. Some, like the epic, are of literary importance but the vast majority are records of transactions, judges rulings, police reports and the other mutinae of city life in the bronze age. Most have references to specific dates or times. When it come to translation it works this way. Different parts of a culture might describe time slightly differently. So you can have two tablets, one says that a particular thing happened during the "Third week of the fourth month of the sixth year of the reign of King X, when the Sun stood still in the sky" and another can say that the same event took place during the "Third week of the fourth month of the sixth year of the reign of King X, at the time of the Summer Solstice". the first is an astronomical reference where the second is probably agricultural. By comparing the myriads of documents, and seeing the same phrases, or different phrases referring to exactly the same date, you logically conclude that the time the "Sun stands still in the sky" is a Solstice. You can get similar clarity when comparing documents from different cities, kingdoms and civilizations. For example both an Egyptian and Hittite document might describe a treaty between a particular Pharoah and a certain Hittite King. Since they are talking about the same thing, regardless of how the time reference is described, they are both talking about the same time. So a comparison between the different phraseologies can give understanding as to meanings. A translation is accepted when and only when the meanings of the passages are consistent. While I have some reservations about some parts of the science of Archaeology, translations aren't part of them. It's very similar to code breaking, the translations must make sense every time or you've done something wrong. The Bible is a work that combines the mystical, mythical and historical all in the one volume. I find a lot of people are so against the mystical and mythical parts that they are willing to throw out the historical as well, which I think is just silly. It is quite reasonable to understand and accept the historical parts without being in any way forced to accept the mystical and mythical parts. I must add that the storytellers couldn't just "make things up". If your stories were significantly different to the other stories, then you got a reputation as a poor storyteller and were no longer welcome. Remember that people already knew the bones of the story that you were telling so you have to be careful with embellishments. Technologically primitive they were, but they weren't stupid. One could reasonably argue that since life was so much harder then, the populace would have had better BS detectors than we have today.

Actually IA, the Bible doesn't say the Earth is 6,000 years old. That figure was arrived at by a human adding up the Ages of people. It's the literalists that make life difficult. Except for Adam and Eve the account of creation isn't even against evolution. The Bible makes no real mention of timeframes or the method employed. Yes it does mention "days", but the comment is also there that "A day for the Lord is as a thousand years", or something like that. Literalists take that thousand years as definitive, but in the customs of the times it was written it simply means a very, very, very long time. It has similar etymology as the Chinese proverb "A jouney of a thousand miles begins with one step". It obviously doesn't apply only and literally to jouneys of one thousand miles, it simply means any long journey. Don't let the fundamentalists and literalists dominate the discussion, they don't hold the majority opinion.

John, it's a bit outside my area but I think the Hittites? were a good example. A kingdom described in the Bible with no basis in archaeology until we realised that we had attributed Hittite ruins to another culture. The OT isn't just a religious book, but also the history of a people. Historical facts are mixed in with miracles and natural occurances are given supernatural causes. The hard part is working out which is which. Take the battle of Jerico for instance. The city did exist and was a major centre during the bronze age. It was also destroyed (possibly by the Israelites) The Biblical account is of trumpets blowing and walls falling and the Sun stopping in the sky. Take away the religious overtones and you have a historical account of the seige and fall of a city. You also have an idea of when this happened. There are two times when the Sun stops in the sky, the Solstices. For a primitive people for about a week around that day the Sun is neither perceptibly higher or lower in the sky, it has stopped its upwards or downwards movement. Most cultures rewrite their histories to give themselves more prestige and the OT is no different. You just have to sort through the coal to find the diamonds. It's also good to remember that the OT was written circa 800 BC, so the stories contained within were passed down by word of mouth for a good thousand years previous to that. In an era without most forms of entertainment the Bard was highly prized. The storytellers would travel from village to village telling their stories of the past in exchange for food and shelter. And if people are p*ss poor they enjoy hearing stories about great deeds done in the past and how their people were "selected" by God and it will all be okay in the end. Wouldn't you? BTW, if more concrete examples of Biblical accuracy being confirmed by archaeology are needed, I'll dig them up. I have a stack of archaeology mags about 5 foot high specifically dealing with the middle east and some "Biblical Archaeology".

Domo, because of our normal radio and TV chatter everybody within 80 odd light years knows we are here. However even the most invasive race would pause in their desire to attack us after watching our broadcasts. Any reasonably sentient race would hesitiate to invade a planet that over the last 60 years has survived atomic mutated giant ants (Them! 1954), reanimated corpses (Plan 9 from Outer Space 1958 and 2009), giant lizards, moths and bugs (japanese Godzilla movies from the 50s), martians (take your pick, up to and including "Mars Attacks" 1996), the blob (1958), vegetable aliens (The Thing 1951), carnivorous plants (Day of the Triffids 1962), collision with another planet (When Worlds Collide 1951) and all manner of other sundry evils. Our broadcasts also show a probably larger than usual percentage of brilliant but highly unstable people who are willing to blow up the planet if they cannot rule it, along with an equal number of just as brilliant people who manage to almost destry the planet by accident. Soon they will see the Constitution Class Battlecruiser "Enterprise" embark on it's 5 year mission to demonstrate not only our technology, firepower and resourcefulness, but also the fact that we captain these ships with men who will chase anything in a skirt. Aliens beware, even your women are not safe. Yes we are broadcasting a message to the stars and the message is "Don't mess with humans, they are very dangerous". Have you ever thought that they might be hiding from us?