Ophiolite

thank you for your responses immortal. You say Hawking is dishonest when he says philosophy is dead. I confess I have not read his thoughts on this matter, so I must rely upon you. If he states unequivocally as a fact that philosophy is dead, when it self evidently is not, then he is being intellectually dishonest. However, I rather suspect that he is using rhetoric and hyperbole to emphasise his opinion that philosophy has passed it Sell By date. Can you clarify? There is no double standard. A decision evolved a few hundred years ago that science would employ methodological naturalism. That is to say it was decided that whether or not the supernatural existed science would not investigate it because its randomness would render it inconvenient or impossible to study. Supernatural events were not discounted, simply excluded from the field of scientific study. It's analagous to not learning any French words when you are studying Swahili. You seem to be conceding that your statement was indeed meaningless. In other words you cannot define science on the basis of what people who don't understand it think it is. Any scientist who rejects God is not functioning as a scientist. He is perfectly free to reject God in his role as person, but science - because it is currently methodologically naturalistic - has nothing to say about God.

Can you provide an example of his intellectual dishonesty? What questions should they ask? Only those who believe in God through faith believe that science is the study of God's creations. Therefore your statement here makes no sense. Moreover only very small amount of inconclusive scientific evidence points towards the existence of God.

Delta V. Repeat until you understand.

I offer one possible explanation. Cometary impact. Four billions years worth. That would be wholly consisten with current theory.

It took 1 minute 15 seconds to produce this information: http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search/display.do?f=2010/TR/TR1008.xml;TR2010001655 You will see that four rock eagles were treated for fracture or injury from 2006 to 2008 in the Lake Van region. There are around 480 further hits on the query "Lake Van" AND "eagle" in Google Scholar.

I know I am in a minority in this. I'd like to know who has awarded the negative rep (and the positive). If, for example, I get a negative rep from swansont I'm going to take a long hard look at the content of the post that earned it. If I get negative rep from a known agitator with the brains of a brachiopod with delusions of adquacy then I shall likely wear it as a badge of honour. And as StringJunky points out there are occassion when more than a singel abyssmal post is made by differen people on the same day.

In one very important sense the answer is no. Scientists are not, or certainly should not, be in the habit of believing things. Belief is to often associated with opinion and with prejudice: I believe it may rain later today; I believe short people often have inferiority complexes. Scientists accept that abiogenesis is the most likely explanation for the origin of life. Why? Because there is more evidence in support of that mechanism than any other. However, please note that acceptance of evolution and acceptance of abiogenesis are two different things. They often go hand in hand, but there is no requirement that they do so. I should clarify that further. The majority of scientists accept it because the majority are not working in that field. The rest of them demonstrate that abiogenesis is the most likely explanation. No acceptance is required. And acceptance is always based on the underlying thought - I could conduct this research myself if I wished.

It would be helpful if you could be a bit more specific. For example: What makes you think a new species of eagle has been found? Where and how did you hear about it? What form of checking have you done? Google search, newspaper archives, university biology departments, etc.

Many of the lurkers on this forum will be at that point in their lives when they consider whether they believe a creationist/ID viewpoint on the origin of life, or accept the scientific hypotheses. They may be attracted to a thread such as this in order to help clarify their thinking. There are two major approaches we can use when a 'believer' promotes their views. 1. We can take it as an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the weaknesses in the creationist argument, to explore the beauty and effectiveness of the scientific method, and to explain some of the aspects of the scientific viewpoint. 2. We can tell the creationist to get lost. Which of these approaches do you think will be more effective at swaying the view of the undecided lurker?

Since finding life is not an objective of the mission any sense of failure you feel will be down to you and not to the mission.

I think you will find you need a lot more than love. Some science would be valuable for starters. There are several instances of purest nonsense in your text. Purveyors of such nonsense would be well advised to avoid the patronising attitude you adopt in your first response. Here are the scientific blunders in your thesis. Consider each exposure of such nonsense to consitute a cogent rebuttal. 1. As already pointed out your use of the word relativity has no meaningful relationship to how the word is used in science. 2. The interior volumes of objects is not, as you claim, dark matter. Dark matter is an entirely different thing. If you choose to abuse scientific terminology and expect to be taken seriously you are in for disappointment. 3. Your discussion of the inversion of the solar system about the asteroid belt is unmitigated crap (this is a technical term you may become increasingly familiar with if you continue to promote your speculation) , The concept bears no relationship to reality and has no supporting evidence to substantiate it in any way. 4. One specific from that particular tranche of nonsense: Venus does not orbit on the other side of the sun. 5. My apologies - I advanced to approximately two thirds through your OP before having to break off to avoid vomiting over my keyboard. Nothing more need be said.

At school and to some extent at university I would remember facts by 'seeing' the page in the textbook and even the paragraph where they were presented. Could I 'look' at this memory and read off each word? No. I would often recall the exact words, but they would not occupy the precise places they did on the orignal page. I don't think this ability is especially unusual, nor do I think it is true 'photographic' memory. I suspect that many people, employing the same memory technique fool themselves into thinking it is eidetic memory.

Of course not. That would make too much sense and would inhibit further disagreement.

Come on, you know what I'm going to say. So, I won't say it.

Exactly what Ringer said. Darryl you seem to be just arguing because you like the sound of your own voice and want to be disagreeable. Your original contention was that the scientific community was ignoring certain developments in evolutionary theory. This has been shown to be incorrect. Your own data show it to be incorrect. Please give it a rest.

The point you continue to miss is that Darwin's theory has been undergoing continual extension almost since its inception. What most of us are trying to tell you is that we consider it more valuable to invest time in considering the next steps in that extension than in arguing over whether or not the extension needs a new name.

I can't help wonderiing Tapeworm, if you are working from a mindset that thinks there is an absolute truth and that mistakes just shouldn't be allowed to happen. Perhaps you could comment on that thought.

Mike, I don't no where to begin. Your enthusiasm is a beautiful thing and I fear to damage it, but you are trying to absorb so much information that it is not surprising you are getting some things quite wrong. Here is a minor attempt at a minor suite of corrections. Chondrites are meteorites. Do not separate them out from the class. Chondrites and their components have undergone various degrees of melting, but they have not undergone wholesale melting and differentiation, as is the case with the achondrites, irons and stony irons. (To complicate matters further there is evidence that the parent body for some chondrites has undergone some melting.) While you are correct that a significant proportion of the calcium in chondrites is present in the CAI's, calcium-aluminium rich inclusions, some is also found within the pyroxenes in the chondrules. The Earth did form from chondrites, but not directly. The chondrites accreted to form larger objects - planetesimals - which through a combination of kinetic and radioactive heat melted and formed differentiated bodies with mantle and core. It was the amalgamation of many of these modified bodies which formed the Earth.

If you had explained at the outset that you were an anal retentive we could have saved ourselves a lot of bother.

I guess that means I am not rational. I guess that means that to be impressed by the emergence of complex objects like stars, complex structure like galaxies, complex processes like nuclear fusion, and complex biological organisms with the capacity to conduct self examination, is all evidence of a deranged mind. I guess that means that to be in awe of a supernova, or abiogenesis, or the volcanic maelstrom of Io, or the flight of a butterfly, is to display a foolish and grossly illogical approach. I guess that means I should encourage people to think their glass is much less than half empty, since its pathetic contents are outweighed by the cold, indifferent balance of the universe. Tell you what - I think I'll just stay irrational.

I am not entirely sure what exactly worship entails. I admire many human beings: Nelson Mandela, Patrick Moore, Jane Goodall, Sidney Poitier, Queen Elizabeth, etc. If I can admire these people with their limited achievements and known weaknesses it is not difficult to imagine having a much stronger admiration and respect for an entity capable of creating an entire universe, regardless of some equally large shortcomings. I suppose that admiration and respect could be called worship. If I were a conventional follower of religion I would find absolutely no problem with the existence of poverty, war, disease, catstrophe and death, since these would be brief interludes en route to eternal life.

It was not my intention to be rude. For that I apologise. However, my opinion remains that thinking the temperatures were absolutes rather than relatives was bizarre and foolish. Bizarre because it runs counter to your normal well constructed posts and foolish because it gives you a completely wrong answer.

I think it is unlikely, as I suspect the Labelled Release experiment on the Viking spacecraft provided the first such evidence. That would make any life evidence her the second instance. (Third, if you count the Viking spacecraft separately.)

1. so God is the origin of God - is that what you are saying?2. Where is your evidence that "all that exists, exists within space time"? 3. 1 and 2 do not appear to be necessarily true, therefore 3 is doubtful. 4. And 4. is irrelevant. 5. As are 5. and 6. You seem to have very weak foundations fro your argument.

The Earth formed from condensed particles in the solar nebula that approximated the composition of chondrites. This extract from a 2007 review article explains it in more detail. (Annual review of earth and planetary sciences. Volume 16 (A88-52285 22-46). Palo Alto, CA, Annual Reviews, Inc., 1988, p. 53-72) Chondrites are sedimentary rocks principally composed of chondrules, which are roughly millimeter-sized particles that were once wholly or partly molten in the nebula and were deposited with several other kinds of particles at the midplane of the solar nebula. Chondrules are largely composed of olivine, (MgxFe1−x)2SiO4, and low-Ca pyroxene,MgxFe1−xSiO3, where x is the Mg/(Mg+Fe) ratio, which crystallized in hours or minutes between∼1800 and∼1300K. These silicates are also major minerals in the chondrite matrix— the fine-grained silicate material that coats chondrules and other coarse chondritic ingredients and in some cases fills the interstices between them. The other two important ingredients of chondrites are the refractory inclusions, which are composed almost entirely of crystalline siliacates and oxides rich in Ca, Al and Ti and formed above 1300K, and the metallic Fe, Ni grains which appear to be closely associetedwith chondrules and coeval with them. Three features suggest that the chondritic ingredients come from the solar nebula disk from which the planets formed. First, their bulk cjhemical composition match that of the Sun's photosphere (neglecting the incompletely condensed elements H, He, C, N, O and the inert gases). Second, chondrite matrices contain small amounts of interstellar and circumstellargrains. Finally, the mineralogy, chamical and oxygen isotopic composition of the chondritic ingredients can generally be understood in terms of thermal processing over the diverse temperature in the solar nebula. I take exception to calling an aggregate of melt derivatives a sedimentary rock, but other than that the summary is excellent.