Moontanman

I am not going to lie and say i don't like to say i told you so... so... I told you guys in post number 151 and 155...

I just viewed a video on You tube about a ghost light, i wasn't impressed but it got me to thinking... I have seen a ghost light, used to be one associated with a set of old railroad tracks near where I live. I saw it one night, it came to within 15 to 20 feet of me, it was a dull red glow, maybe as big as a baseball moving about head height between the rails, it was visible for a couple minutes as it traversed a hundred meters of tracks toward me and blinked out and when i turned to look it was behind me moving away. It followed the tracks and i figured it was some sort of electrical phenomena. Of course locals had a legend about a train conductor who lost his head or something but it was visible if not real... Any idea what it could have been? The tracks were pulled up decades ago and no sightings since then but I have always wondered what it could have been...

I think we need a bit of evidence for that assertion...

In my experience believers either are not aware of how unsupportable their beliefs are or do not care. The more fundamentalist they are the more they are likely not to care if their beliefs are incoherent and tend to only listen to those who agree with them assuming anyone who does not is either deluded, mislead, and or trying to delude or mislead them...

My take on religion is driven by the simple fact they have the burden of proof because they make a positive claim and I simply don't see any evidence that even comes close to meeting the burden of proof... I posted a image in the jokes thread in the lounge i thought illustrated this very well...

I do have a couple of science videos that explain some reasonable possibilities if you want I'll give you some links but it seems to me your main problem is understanding how life could be anything other than what we currently have. Bacteria, modern bacteria, are extremely complex highly evolved creatures. The first living things would have been much much simpler. I am a bit of a fan of the metabolism first crowd but that is just because it makes more sense to me than genes first but if I had to bet I would bet quite a bit it was a synergy of several diverse routes some of which no longer exist in modern life forms. If you take olive oil and water and shake it up to make salad dressing you have made a good representation of an empty cell, such tiny bubbles of oil and water have some amazing properties and do occur naturally. They attract and concentrate monomers inside their walls and monomers polymerize spontaneously and so become trapped inside. mechanical forces can cause them to break apart without losing the contents allow them to attract more oil like molecules to grow again which allows more monomers to be absorbed and so on. My explanation is not complete, I have no doubt left out quite a bit from the videos but I was astounded by the complete reasonableness of the processes that can lead to very simply life...

I've been raising bassets for many years. I have three now and for dogs with the reputation of being stupid the things they do on their own is often amazing. I had one who would lure squirrels but putting dry dog food out as bait and pretend to be asleep beside a small pile of dog food and suddenly come alive and grab a squirrel and eat it, he caught a lot of squirrels like that, another saw me carrying fire wood up on my deck and the next morning an entire cord of fire wood was not so neat piled in front of my door... I couldn't get the door open, another one came and got me out of the shower when the water heater caught fire.. I love dogs, I think they may have had an effect on human evolution almost as strong as our effect on them... An Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman, a Welshman, a Latvian, a Turk, a German, an Indian, several Americans (including a Hawaiian and an Alaskan), an Argentinean, a Dane, an Australian, a Slovak, an Egyptian, a Japanese, a Moroccan, a Frenchman, a New Zealander, a Spaniard, a Russian, a Guatemalan, a Colombian, a Pakistani, a Malaysian, a Croatian, a Uzbek, a Cypriot, a Pole, a Lithuanian, a Chinese, a Sri Lankan, a Lebanese, a Cayman Islander, a Ugandan, a Vietnamese, a Korean, a Uruguayan, a Czech, an Icelander, a Mexican, a Finn, a Honduran, a Panamanian, an Andorran, an Israeli, a Venezuelan, an Iranian, a Fijian, a Peruvian, an Estonian, a Syrian, a Brazilian, a Portuguese, a Liechtensteiner, a Mongolian, a. Hungarian, a Canadian, a Moldovan, a Haitian, a Norfolk Islander, a Macedonian, a Bolivian, a Cook Islander, a Tajikistani, a Samoan, an Armenian, an Aruban, an Albanian, a Greenlander, a Micronesian, a Virgin Islander, a Georgian, a Bahaman, a Belarusian, a Cuban, a Tongan, a Cambodian, a Canadian, a Qatari, an Azerbaijani, a Romanian, a Chilean, a Jamaican, a Filipino, a Ukrainian, a Dutchman, a Ecuadorian, a Costa Rican, a Swede, a Bulgarian, a Serb, a Swiss, a Greek, a Belgian, a Singaporean, an Italian, a Norwegian and an African walk into a bar. "I'm sorry," says the barkeep', after scrutinizing the group, "You can't come in here without a Thai! One more for today....

Actually no, no one has built Jurassic Park, it was a movie, and since i am by definition not a centaur making a centaur by any method would not make me a centaur...

There is no decision making, where do you get that from?

I cannot be part horse and part human, this is not a possibility, no metaphor is involved. Me being a centaur is impossible not the least because if I was a centaur i would not be me...

That is so cool...

I'm still reeling from the knowledge i can't be a centaur... I certainly can imagine being one...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis

Since atheism is nothing but a lack of a belief in a god and some religions do not believe in a god as part of their belief system then it is evidently true that atheists can be religious but "not buying what theists are selling" is not a religion by any definition...

Never argue with an idiot... http://vitaminl.tv/video/885

For me it's "I don't know so I need to investigate as much as possible", there are sightings that are inexplicable and not because of lack of data, I do know that doesn't mean aliens but it turned out rocks did fall from the sky and centuries of simply saying no it had to be something else didn't make it something else... ignoring puzzles never solves them and disinformation helps no one but those holding secrets... I think the quote from Jefferson (it might have been someone else) went something like this... "I would rather believe two Yankee professors would lie, than that stones have fallen from the heavens." ​It could be apocryphal, old quotes are hard to be completely sure about...

While I am sure there is an explanation if you watch closely they do disappear into dark clouds at least once around 00:10... I have seen the search light effect many times, this just looked a bit different than the ones i've seen...

No beanieb it doesn't work like that and it has been explained why several times at least in this thread i am sure. We do not know what primitive life looked or how complex it had to be before we would call it life but there is no doubt that life has no "software or hardware" at it's most basic level it is chemistry, nothing more, the information fallacy is just that... a fallacy... and the idea that the first life was as complex as even a modern bacteria is also a fallacy as well...

A more realistic take on the Thorium powered car....

I'm allergic to radioactive cheese nips anyway....

I know not many share this little fetish of mine but most threads on SFN remind me of music videos or at least songs, this one reminds me of this one....

WHAT! Mods don't get the ladies?