Ophiolite

If I had found the answers in what you had written I would not have asked you where you were going with this? Would you please clarify. I'm not proud of the fact that I find your dismissal of my query offhand and rude. And your throw away line at the end seems - when I wear my paranoia hat - implicitly critical of me for even asking the question. I hope your reply will consign such negative thinking to the waste basket.

Michel, you are confusing gravitational attraction with pressure.

Dawkins gives the anti-religion lobby a bad name.

One of my interests is the diversity and thus the origin of basalt lavas. My initial interest occured as an undergradaute in the late 1960s and thus was based on research work from the 1950s and early 1960s. The understanding of basalt formation has undergone significant development from that time. Arguably at least three distinct phases can be identified in the progress of our understanding. These required thinking outside the box in terms of analytical methods, basic theory and geographic scope. Please tell me in what way petrologists need to chill down and recalibrate in relation to theory that is,, in some cases a couple of years old, not centuries old?

Definitions are a means of imposing an artificial structure on a continuum of phenomena. In this instance the definitions (and there are more than just "a change in allele frequency over time") were developed for the natural world. It is questionable whether it is even proper to try to apply them rigorously to the artificial scenario you have posited. Serparately, may I ask where you are trying to get to with this?

If scientists were rigorously trained on the writing of excellent abstracts then science would advance 23% faster than it does at present. (A citation will be available as soon as I've written the paper.)

Here is a friendly heads up for you born. I have reported your posts in this thread for failure to properly answer questions or address requests. The persistent passive-aggressive character of your replies marks you as a a troll or someone with serious challenges in their life. I recommend you undergo a transformation in posting style. If you are as smart as you pretend to be it should not be too difficult. I just noted that you are new to the forum - a newborn, in fact. Perhaps you are new to forums generally. If so, I repeat, the style you are using here will not cut it. The fascinating thing about advice is that you can ignore it, or accept it. Freedom is a remarkable thing.

Well, Alta Vigilem, I am disappointed. You lambasted other members for not according your proposal a proper reception, taking several hundred words to do so. On the other hand, I have respectfully raised some specific points about your thesis and am prepared to work through all of it with you, yet have had zero response. I hope you will rectify this soon.

Sunshaker, i suggest you have an interesting choice facing you. You can decide, broadly, to take one of two paths. Path 1: You can decide to use your imagination and your interest in science to initiate a proper program of study that will educate and inform you. While much of this will be fun you will also have to spend darker hours, where you wrestle with difficult concepts. This path will require that you open your mind to the work and ethos of those who have trod this path before. You will be required to abandon beliefs that are refuted by observation. You will have to learn to be ready to discard ideas that are unsupported by evidence. But at the end you will be a wiser and more knowledgeable person. At that point you will be a valuable and treasured member of this or any other science forum you join. Path 2: You use your imagination to derive beliefs having no foundation in fact. You can cherry pick a few observations, subject them to biased misinterpretation, delude yourself into thinking you have discovered something substantial and gaily seek to spread your beliefs far and wide. Your membership of science forums may well be short lived. Good luck with the decision making process.

Let us suppose that I believe the universe to be a unicorn. How would we distinguish between your notion that it is an electron, with my notion that it is a unicorn? We should have to seek evidence to support or refute both notions. Whichever gathered the best suite of evidence would be, provisionally, accepted as the more likely. Do you see any way we can currently gather such evidence? I certainly don't, which renders the beliefs wholly valueless in any scientific sense. Would you agree?

You have presented an incomplete argument and no actual citations to support this position. gian meanwhile has received two negative ratings for simply continuing to ask questions that, in the absence of presented evidence, seem quite reasonable to him. While I happen to agree with your position I believe it is incumbent on you, as it is on all of us, to provide evidence when called upon to do so. Your earlier argument, in crank ridden massive font, fails. I hope you will return to character and provide that evidence for gian.

The obvious we do today. The implict takes a little longer.

It is said - and best said with an upper crust English accent - that only an American can rhyme dance, romance and trousers. Which is dance,romance and pants.

Small earthquakes are going on all the time. Some databases have cut-offs on the magnitude of earthquake they will record. There is nothing sinister about that. Earthquakes are studied for a variety of reasons and small earthquakes could detract from proper studies of some issues. That is not cherry picking, it is focusing. Even if an earthquake is recorded in a database it will not follow that all will then be reported on line. Again, nothing sinister, its a matter of bandwidth and judged relevance. Remember, this was reported on your local news station. It was important locally. It seems it was very unimportant elsewhere. You said being paranoid has kept you alive for forty five years, but how do you know its not because they are looking after you?

I think this may be on topic. You decide. If one has an interest in science; if one is intrigued and inspired by the workings of the world; if one is driven to find answers to tough questions; then, why would you choose to be an outsider? If I want to buy bread I go to a bakery. If want to do science I go where the scientists are. It must take a special kind of arrogance - the kind that is unjustified - to think one can do it alone. Ultimately, I see such arrogance as character flaw.

It is one of the generally unmentioned truths that pre-biotic chemistry was likley subject to Darwinian selection. The rather consistent silence on this has a few possible causes. The evidence for evolution was growing in the century before Darwin, so that broad acceptance in the scientific community occured rather rapidly. The same could not be said about the origin of life - no evidence and nothing much more, till Oparin and Haldane, than Darwin's "warm little pond" and very large if. So, the two were very distinct and seemingly rightly separated. Note also, that the complexity of even the simplest life was not properly understood. Though an extended process rather than an event was required, this was not fully appreciated for a considerable time. Creationists like to attack Darwinian theory on the basis that it does not explain the origin of life. This has led to the counter argument that seeks to clearly distinguish between the two. The general public and other sciences use evolution in more than one way. This can lead to a zealous definition, sensuo stricto, to cover only biological evolution of existing life forms. Personally, I think the separation of evolution from abiogenesis is a valuable one. While there are similar principles at work in both, there are important differences and these are worth distinguishing in the terminology.

You asserted that this was the belief of scientists. It is not. You were asked to provide a citation that would support the claim that "scientists say" that "first there was nothing then it exploded". You failed to do so and made feeble excuse, promising to "do some research and return". I suspect we may wait a very long time for that. It would be proper and would gain you a great deal of respect, if you were to admit that you are mistaken in your understanding of cosmology and the claims of the Big Bang theory. You have an opportunity to do that now. Will you take it?

Isis? Did you mean IRIS? The latter is an association of research institutes involved in seismology. They have several data bases, some of which are populated automatically. So, some questions: 1. Did you mean IRIS, if not, what is ISIS? 2. Where and when are the quakes you refer to? Can you provide a link to verify their location and character? 3. What specific data base are you not seeing them reported on? If you mean IRIS, then IRIS and the USGS are different entities. Do you believe that every earthquake in the US is recorded in every data base and published on every site relating to seismic events? There is a practical certainty of a major earthquake from Washington D.C. to Missouri. It is just very unlikely to occur any time soon. Why the paranoia? If it is a medical condition, accept my regrets and I'll withdraw now. If it's an educational deficiency I can work with you to correct it.

I don't quite see (with non-calcite eyes) why you are so enamoured by/excited about calcium. It is the fifth most common element in the Earth's crust and plays a central role in biology and geology. But it isn't as important as oxygen in either regard.

Nevertheless, it is an argument that has been presented in depth, in a structured, logical manner. Throwing a few sound bites at it won't make it go away.

So what is the truth? Or will you go all Jack Nicholson on us?

Thank you. I now feel encouraged to read at least some of your detail.

If we spot a giant circle on Alpha Centauri it could be evidence of celestial tic-tac-toe.

Sorry Arc, but there is no way those paragraphs can be conisdered an abstract for the rest of the piece. Please write a proper abstract, otherwise you are talking to yourself.

arc, you have to learn to write abstracts. I am interested in your topic, but have neither the time, nor inclination ot invest in reading your entire post without some prior evidence it would be worth it. That could be provided by a well written abstract. I hope you will take the time to create one.