Ophiolite

Is this an assertion or did you mean to place a perhaps at the start of the sentence? If you meant it as written, what is your evidence that they pick up after themselves? Remember you cannot use the absence of evidence as evidence. If you insist on this I have some elephant repellant I can sell you. Thirty years of use and not a single elephant has appeared in Aberdeen. I am not aware of any evidence that is robust enough to be called inconclusive. Can you give specific examples? And we know how good governments are at keeping secrets, don't we?

I understand they have been talking to the dolphins for years.

So you skillfully choose to address a minor point (and defend your position inadequately, at that) and completely ignore the key point of my post. You have attributed to religion what is the consequence of the interplay of may factors of which religion is only one. That attribution has these characteristics: It is a gross simplification. It is offensive. It is ill considered. It is - using the word literally - ignorant.

You said "a lot of the of the evil and destruction arising from Islam need not be misinterpreted". You have, it appears, erected a strawman and introduced an emotive term (evil) that is ill defined. The destruction and chaos simplistically attributed to Islam are more accurately a consequence of centuries of complex social, cultural, political, military and economic interactions between nations, tribes, and ideologies. Certainly religion has played an important role here too, but to imagine that what we are seeing is the consequence of religion alone, or even principally, as you assert is gross oversimplification.

Unfortunately I read that admonition as "If you don't agree with what I declare is the obviously correct interpretation I don't wish you take part in this discussion." Your wish is my command, Adieu.

Most societies would take the view that aiding a diseased human would be the ethical, i.e. good thing to do. On what basis do you justify calling your desire to live good, other than by the circular argument of saying that is how it is defined? You might as well call it Cyril, it would make as much sense. This is the first time on any forum I've thought someone would actually benefit from a thorough reading of Plato. I suggest you spend a year studying his writings then you might not post so much nonsense.

Excellent switch of perspective.

I imagine that the ability to oversimplify must be very comforting for you.

I just wanted to point out that fairy tales are typically: a) Entertaining b) Contain an important social and moral message c) Are internally self consistent On that basis I think it is wrong to call the ramblings we are discussing a fairy tale. It does Hans Christian Andersen a great disservice.

Misinterpreted religion has always been a convenient anchorage for self-disenfranchised fools. And a convenient scapegoat for people who find complexity troubling.

Being with someone who is different to you in many fundamental ways and who disagrees with you vigorously on most matters is undoubtedly a natural state for humans. That's why we invented marriage.

You make an excellent point. One that was in my mind as I wrote my brief post, but which I did not articulate. In my teen years I watched the news from the States, the riots , the marches, the assassinations, the struggle. It certainly informed who I became, I hope in a positive way. I have worked for most of my life within the oil industry and the discrimination within it was still rampant in the 70s, no matter how subtly concealed. Today it is much better, but old habits and beliefs die hard and those who hold them have, in some cases, just got smarter at concealing them. If we pretend the problem has been solved it will never go away.

How do you plan to deal with the fact that people like to disagree and to argue? How will you deal with the fact that when people are in difficulties, fearful for their future, there is an instinctive dislike for anyone different in any significant (to them) way? How will you suppress the centuries old tribal animosity Great dream, really tough implementation - and thinking warm fuzzy thoughts will not get you there.

Racial prejudice is deeply embedded in the social, economic and political structure of the South. It is one and a half centuries since the civil war ended. It looks like we need a century and a half more.

I was saving that for later. I find nails go in more accurately with a series of light taps, rather than the application of a sledge hammer.

Have you ever considered the remote possibly that it is you that is wrong, rather than the hundreds of thousands of physicists who preceded you?

From The Big Bang Theory Leonard Hofstadter: Alright, well let me see if I can explain your situation using physics. What would you be if you were attached to another object by an inclined plane wrapped helically around an axis? Sheldon Cooper: Screwed. Leonard Hofstadter: There you go

That is because you are very deeply mistaken. You are completely free to disagree. Being as wrong as you are will have no observable effect on the universe. It will, however, have negative effects on you. That saddens me.

@rivers82 Can you explain how plants were able to evolve such diversity? They lack the ability to be aware of whether or not they are having a happy life and ,according to this alternative hypothesis, it would be that awareness that allowed them to diversify. They lack it - so they should not have evolved.

I regret the need to blunt be. People who follow the norm do not get accepted by Oxford or Cambridge. Only extraordinarily gifted people, who have demonstrated their abilities do. If you wish to follow the norm then apply for another UK or US university where acceptance will be easier and the education almost as good - and sometimes better - than Oxford or Cambridge. But as others have noted, it is your academic attainments that will be important to getting in to any of these.

You realise that polar bears would decimate the penguin populations. Within a couple of decades, at most, there would be no Antarctic penguins left. Don't you like penguins?

I've told people in public, for example on a train, to stop swearing - it is not appropriate in the presence of children. (And I am not interested in anyone telling me that many children already swear. On that basis robbery is socially acceptable.) On the other hand, in certain groups, I will deliberately use swear words to achieve a specific effect. The decision is always judicial.

So, in short, you think it is significant that you have noticed the simplifications, or conveniences of calculation, made in describing orbits and believe that others have failed to recognise these simplifications, or conveniences of calculation. It is interesting that the bloody obvious is so bloody obvious to the bulk of the scientifically literate that they feel no need to state the bloody obvious at every turn and certainly not in a paper that purports to assert that the bloody obvious has not been previously recognised. I appreciate your help in clarifying this for me and apologise for not recognising, from the outset, that the error of thinking you were making was bloody obvious.

I am a simple minded geologist, though my friends say I am just simple minded. Could you explain, using simple mechanics, why what you assert is true?

Since this is a science forum, I shall now ask you to support this claim with peer reviewed research articles. (Or you could just clarify that is no more than an opinion.) In fact, your claim is trivially disproved. Here is advice that will certainly extend your life: do not walk in front of articulated trucks that are moving at high speed.