Moontanman

Your confusion is your own, I understand what iNow is saying. Yes religion can contribute both good and bad but the good that religion contributes has been hijacked away from natural human social behavior and all that is left is the bad behavior that religion actively promotes. In fact i would say that religion not only hijacks natural human altruistic behavior and claims it as being rooted in religion it also magnifies the natural behaviors that humans try to suppress as well as adding it's own evil... You can say wars are started by things other than religion and you would of course be correct but nothing can dehumanize the "other" better than religion and threaten you beyond the grave if you don't go with the religious demands for that dehumanization... Only modern secularization of religion has allowed the smiling ingratiating version of religion we see today, in places where religion is law it is more likely you find the same dehumanizing behavior that religion allowed itself to promulgate back the law was religion and religion was the law....

Of course not TR, it's probably still snowing where you are....

Awesome....

I admit to not having read his book yet but I have seen his videos and they were pretty much on the mark. His encounter with Ted Haggard was classic....

I don't know how to make this little flic play here but this is seriously funny.... https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=490815927671395&set=vb.432290810190574&type=2&theater

I am reasonably confident that a science fiction piece will have no effect on the earth's rotation or magnetic field... In the real world I am almost as confident the human species is incapable of generating that much power right now and for the foreseeable future....

TR, it's your story, you can do what ever you want but make it internally consistent, anything can happen in your own little universe but be consistent....

Wow! Spend the night in the hospital and everyone goes gaga.... Let us take religion out of the equation for a moment. Let's say we have two groups of humans, one group believes the Earth is flat the other thinks it's oval. this disagreement is the source of much discord between the groups. The leaders of the two groups try to convince each other of the error of their ways and get no place. So they strive to drum up support among the masses to try and convince their neighbors to do the same but it's the end of the harvest season, many young people are coming of age, the coming long winter nights will be easier to pass with a warm body next to you so the leaders get no place with this either other that a few fights in local taverns by hotheads who really just want to fight to begin with and don't really care about what... Now let's insert religious belief, remember this is something the people really believe. The holy scriptures demand that unbelievers in the flat/oval earth must be converted, anyone who believes the wrong way will burn in hell for an eternity. each side is sure it's god is the one true god and not doing god's works will doom you to eternal hell fire. Whipping up a little army to convert the infidels seems like a good thing, especially since these gods make sure that having a warm body next to you in the long winter nights depends on approval from god. Add that god demands that unbelievers be killed and if you refuse there is that pesky hell fire for all eternity to worry about.... and the land of the infidels that refuse to convert can be yours for the taking... Whipping up a army of fervent believers isn't so difficult this time... Religion ruins everything.... Power corrupts... absolute power corrupts absolutely.... religion is the quintessential absolute power.... A government can make you do many things, torture you, jail you, enslave you, kill you, but only religion can threaten you beyond the grave....

Take me to your leader!

Yes, I agree the problem is in human nature and rule of law helps to protect us from that but rule by religion which is not much more than rule by emotion allows practically anything to be fostered on anyone you disagree with. We cannot afford to allow religion to regain the power it once had... Evil men do evil things, good men do good things, religion makes good men do evil things... You just might want to go back and think a bit about that bolded part because i think it proves my point.... If your last point is true then I can show the ebola virus is harmless the same way, if I send it to pluto it can't infect anyone there so it's harmless....

Now wait a minute... I thought the martians had tried to escape their apocalypse but had crash landed on earth and the spaceship had put them all in hibernation until modern times?

Exactly!

Dammit iNow, Puff isn't real? You mean I've been singing that song to raise Puff up out of the ocean all this time and he isn't real? Next you'll say Adrianna isn't real and the honor I enjoy of reciting poetry while the witches dance naked under the full moon isn't really for the benefit of the Moon Goddess.... Seriously, it has been suggested that i need to go out and talk to some of the majority of at worst harmless religious people who make up most of the religious in our land. No need, I have and do, you misunderstand my fear of the religious. I understand completely that most of the religious are at worst harmless cranks and most are the nice people next door that that rarely even talk about their religion other than the occasional "Bless her heart" or giving thanks around a special meal. But you don't have to look far to see these people are deeply divided, thousands of different sects, all of which disagree on sometimes minor and sometimes major points of dogma. They all now days say they all are Christians and then there are those nice "harmless" people who knock on your front door asking if you've heard the good news or know about a new testament of Jesus. Merely annoying you say? a little over 100 years ago Mormons were killing non Mormons and blaming it on the Native Americans, go back a little father and in the US Baptists were killing Catholics and Baptists or some other sect were killing Quakers and so on. Right now the radical fringes of our nice tame religion are gaining power. passing laws denying citizens rights based on religious doctrine, they do this because the nice tame religious people think the fringes are the same as they are and think that religion in schools and government, a state religion sounds like a pretty good thing. How could a religion based on the teaching of Jesus be a bad thing? They have no clue or choose to ignore the history of religion and how it acted when it had real power and didn't have to beg for attention, when it could demand compliance under the force of law and punishments were often quite harsh. We have these churches that used to be small insignificant crazies calling not that the end times are coming but that they should help them along, insisting the Holy Bible is the divine inerrant word of the one true god. Now these churches are huge and influential and driving not just public opinion but politics as well. Influential churches calling for homosexuals to be rounded up and killed. Passing laws to strip rights away from homosexcuals and anyone now married under civil law.Insisting that the bible be taught as "science" and stripping public schools of money and giving that money to religious indoctrination centers schools. Yes religion seems harmless but take a good long look into certain areas of the middle east where religion, law, and government are the same thing and being stoned or burned on a pyre still takes place, that is what Christianity used to look like and will again if it is allowed to regain power... I think I'm a time traveler from the distant future sent here to pass as one of the general population and at death my soul will be recalled to the future, where the technology exists to do such things, and I will be reinstated into a new body so i can recount my times as a member or your primitive superstitious society.... delusional?

GEV's generally only work over rather flat terrain, in fact usually the ocean, they are difficult to stop and take off, needing an airport type place to do either... Then it would be a train...

Where would you drive such a vehicle?

You should give some thought to this, if it doesn't have two wheels it's not a motorcycle, most modern motorcycles are limited more by tire technology than anything else. If not for this problem modern superbikes would currently be quite capable of 250 mph plus easily. In fact this one reputedly can already do this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Tomahawk While it technically does have four wheels it handles as though it had two and is for all intents and purposes is a motorcycle... Just how fast it is supposed to be capable of is disputed but 350mph + doesn't seem too far fetched and that is only because of the limitations of the tires and drag... not the engine... A hovercraft would not handle like a motorcycle or perform like one so would not be one. So write a good story, postulate a fast vehicle, but leave it to the readers imagination as to what it is exactly...

I've watched all his videos, but I've read none of his books, In his videos i see no inconsistencies or logical fallacies, in fact he gives religion quite a bit more leeway than i do...

TR, the story is far more important that the technology, don't worry about what the vehicle looks like make the story interesting, the suspension of disbelief of a good story can account for quite a bit of unrealistic background...

No No, you will notice these motorcycles are going quite slow, the faster you go the more the vehicle changes, various counter intuitive forces come into play. You have to employ counter steering if you are going much above a fast run and at speeds like you are suggesting turns would be very wide and totally done by steering in the opposite direction from the way you want to go. I'm not sure how having a loop across the top helps you ate all, at any speed much more than a slow crawl it would just flip you end over end and destroy the bike and you...

Could you elaborate on these issues? My thought was that logic in fact was or is instrumental in solving these problems, I see no way religion could contribute to solving either, in fact we are slowly seeing the tragedy of the commons spread over our entire planet and religion is if anything contributing to this problem not helping to solve it...

Religion is not just something you believe to be true I think it's quite easy to define religion, defining god is quite a bit harder. All religions share a belief in something supernatural but not necessarily in a god. Very nearly all religions, if not all, define special people who define what this supernatural belief consists of and what rules it's followers have to follow. All religions must proselytize non believers to survive and those that join must be equal to or be greater than those that leave or the religion fails to survive. Often apostasy is punished severely, sometimes with death. Often religions have written texts that demand followers belief on faith what those books say. Critical thought is actively discouraged no matter what photon propeller seems to want to believe. In fact in the Judeo/Christian/Islamic mythos it is often stated outright that when reality and doctrine disagree doctrine must take precedence. Most fundamental religions require apologetics to explain away the inconsistencies of doctrine and dogma While many religious sects try to stay away from dictating reality the fundamentalists always drive the religion by attempting to dictate reality, this series of videos is excellent for making that point, i know it's a long series but for anyone who wants to understand what religion can be when given real power this is very enlightening. Sadly the religious are often the people who least understand their religion...

Well It's your concept for a fictional book, you can give your characters any traits you want but in the real world... no...

Sam, I am not going to take umbrage at your quip about UFOs since I do not "believe" and only advocate investigation Of UFOs and decry the misinformation campaign fostered by the military over the years, as for schizophrenic I have never done anything the voices tell me to do... well not often... Yes it did, feudal system of serfdom, slavery, being tortured to death to if you pissed off the religious authorities. Religious wars conquering and enslaving or killing the resident populations, yup them older societies were wonderful... Religion comes to us now days with a smiling face a open hand and sweet promises... This is not what religion really is, go back to before religion was gelded by secular authorities, when religion had real power and see how benign it is.... The crusaders are what drives religion, the fundamentalist fringes drive the mainstream and here in the states the fringes are coming close to capturing the mainstream again. The last thing we want is religion with power... forums like this one would be used to track people like me and burn me at the stake... no thank you I'll take secularism anytime...

TR, it wouldn't make any difference how far off the ground you were going if you fell off. I've been on a motorcycle at well over 150 mph, i felt no force trying to tear me off the bike. I was hunkered down over the gas tank but I did see the speedo sweep past 150, at that speed you don't look at the speedo much if you want to avoid objects that suddenly appear in your path and at that speed everything appears quite suddenly. I'm not sure human reflexes are capable of controlling something much faster two or three hundred mph that close to the ground unless you were on an open flat course that you knew had no other vehicles that would be in your way and falling off at anything over 40 or 50 mph becomes a matter of luck and safety equipment to survive...