Moontanman

Immortal, this is simply not a known factor, there are several proposed pathways that life could have developed from non life in a natural way and the idea that life contains information that cannot have come about through natural selection is simply not true. And yes, all the letters of the English language could indeed result in real knowledge even if the process was completely random if the ones that worked were conserved and the ones that didn't discarded... A good hypothesis... Life by chance?

UFO sighting yesterday, 22 July 2012...

I can't support a law that would result in civilians never having guns, I have kept hand guns for home defense, yes I live someplace where home invasions happen, not often, but often enough. Around here having a gun in the home has prevented home invasions from being successful but I have decided to take a stance against hand guns and things like assault rifles. Hand guns are just too dangerous in an emergency, you really have to be good with one to use it when your adrenaline is running high. I keep a pump shotgun, short barrel, to use indoors. I can make sure the shot is small enough not to kill someone a mile away if I shoot and hit a wall instead of the intruder. I do know people with "lots" of guns, collectors they call themselves, some do not even keep ammunition for many of their guns, most of them are very safe and worry me not at all. Sadly a handful have guns even though they shouldn't be allowed to own a sling shot. I have seen civilians exchange gun fire over silly crap that any sane person could have avoided easily. Nothing like having to dive under cars as two jackasses exchange pistol vs assault rifle fire in your apartment parking lot because they were drunk and one cut the other off in traffic.... Hand guns I can see being very hard to buy and requiring extensive training to own, assault rifles would seem to be a no brainer, but in my state obtaining a gun is difficult. They do a thorough back ground search and i am pretty sure there is a limit on the numbers of guns you can have with out a special permit. More to the point I don't see how someone in the theater crowd having a gun could have made any difference what so ever, I doubt it would have been a factor even if this person knew others had guns, once crazy comes to roost all bets are over. But I can see how someone who wanted to inflict mass casualties could easily do so with out guns, this particular guy seemed quite good at making bombs as well. several small pipe bombs thrown into the theater would have been just as effective. The bottom line is crazy happens and if we want to be sure no individual opens fire on innocents we need to ban all guns.... Then of course we will be subjects of the criminal element and have to rely on the police being nearby to call in the coroner to pick up the bodies of the innocent. The police most certainly will not be there in time to help and would be just as useless as having a hand gun in a smoke filled room.... I honestly don't see how banning guns would take guns away from criminals, only honest people... I know that's a cliche but it's difficult not see as logically true... To be even handed here cops have gone nuts as well and shot innocent people, as have military personnel, this guy was obviously nuts and his obsession with buying guns should have raised a flag or two IMHO.... Edited for content, I switched words....

Yes but how do we know which ones are "doing the dirt" how can we objectively choose? it's a sure bet that left or right has nothing to do with it and the ground is still rushing up to school us on our lack of knowledge...

Hubert Yockey? Really? The odds of how a modern cell or parts of modern cell are meaningless, life started out much simpler and DNA probably didn't come about for quite some time. http://www.livescience.com/3214-life-created-lab.html http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090109173205.htm Currently there are many avenues of how and where life or the parts of it might have formed, personally I think it was a synergy of several different avenues that came together to produce the first life forms but these were much more simple than what we know as life. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenesis So you add one more strawman, you know that comparing a biological organism to a man made object is a strawman. Space shuttles can not reproduce or evolve... And so your point would be?

Damn rigney, we agree on something else, better get out the score card.... It's not just the liberals vs conservatives when it comes to politicians it's who is paying them.... Unbridled Capitalism is what is running this country to ruin, the airplane that is our country is in a nose dive and both sides only worry about how fast it spins to the left or right ignoring completely the ground as it rushes up... but no matter who is in charge the direction of the plane remains the same....

I suggest you go to school and learn before you post. They are not the same but they have exactly the same amount of evidence and that evidence is false, your creation myth is not true, nether is any of the other religious creation myths, hokum every one... you are pointing to other religions and saying they are false, in other words the pot calling the kettle black.... please elaborate, this makes no sense at all....

No the bible is demonstrably false as is the tale of Santa Claus. So why accept what they say with no evidence? The bible doesn't fit in with what we see today either... yes, i agree your entire argument is a waste of your time, you are clueless to reality and willfully ignorant...

God has been in retreat since the enlightenment, he has gone from the explanation for everything to explaining nothing... How could non belief affect god? How is your favorite fairy tale any more logical than anyone else's? They have exactly the same evidence you do.... ie nothing.... Yes, this is ture but all of them including yours is equally crazy... I humbly suggest you consider this... pot kettle black.... Why does it have to have a reason? Why does that reason have to be your favorite god myth?

So if a scientist makes artificial life in the lab you will admit that there is no god? Show me one that is accurate... the one you cling desperately to is trivially falsified...

Combine the one with the other and you get a universe spanning empire, I can just see the film, the special effects....naw it's been done.... No not a Mormon but I took the idea that god's main command was to be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.... it made sense to me... anyway, I was thinking about a Dyson sphere and then thought of ring world, the perfect artificial habitat.

Worlds Largest collections of strawmen on the interwebs?

You should be proud of your son, being able to work and make enough money to live and go to school while not unique it not something everyone can do and I ask why should they? In our society some sort of training beyond high school is no longer optional to succeed it is necessary to succeed. Exactly, real studies have shown that the type of people interviewed in that vid clip are rare, it's nothing but poisoning the well by cherry picking data. Real Welfare Queens!

Anyone who can watch this series of videos, there are more than 15 of them, and still believe in the New Testament.... Well they do have faith.... but no idea what evidence consists of..

Rigney, do you understand the concept of Cherry Picked data? 50 years ago rigney you would have had a good point but in this day and age if you don't have 4 years of college you are as screwed as someone 50 years ago who didn't get out of primary school. I think college should be free for those who can make the grade, vocational schools for those who cannot. If you want to pursue a higher education than that then it should be on your own dime but the bare necessities should not be limited to those who can pay for it only.... So tax payers reach into their pockets and pay the men working on roads and the government is not connected to it in any way???? I wondered why people stop and give the workers money.... no wait those are panhandlers....

Death could only be eliminated if you did one of two things, sterilized anyone who was immortal or provided unlimited land areas to expand on... Now who here has proposed that? ME Me Me, how long would it take humanity to fill up the land area equivalent to 3,000,000 plus earths? A Ring World would solve all such problems and as God i could make new Ring Worlds at will.... vote for me for God!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120720103543.htm ScienceDaily (July 20, 2012) — New findings suggest the surface of Saturn's largest moon may have undergone a recent transformation. For many years, Titan's thick, methane- and nitrogen-rich atmosphere kept astronomers from seeing what lies beneath. Saturn's largest moon appeared through telescopes as a hazy orange orb, in contrast to other heavily cratered moons in the solar system. Images from the Cassini mission show river networks draining into lakes in Titan's north polar region. (Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS)

Yes if a true miracle ever occurred....

Well if I can do anything I would first build something that was intelligently designed.... A Ring World, Larry Nivens unique take on humans and ETs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld I couldn't help my self...

What the OP is saying sounds a bit like the Ekpyrotic Universe. http://wwwphy.princeton.edu/~steinh/npr/

Can you provide a mechanism for detecting exploding hydrogen bombs over interstellar distances?

We agree on far more than you think rigney, but you prefer to label me as a left wing nut, I of course label you as a right wing nut, these attitudes of us and them is what drives the lies and insanity... We, as intelligent people, need to stop labeling people because they disagree on some things, a true Centerist wouldn't lean in any direction that was supported by lies and would do their best weed out the bad from the good no matter where it comes from. Accepting something with out question because it supports our world view is a completely human thing to do but it plays into the hands of those that want power at any cost, they have no honor, lies are their bread and butter... To some extent the age old idea that lying is ok if it supports a good cause has been perverted to mean lying is ok if it support our agenda no matter what that agenda is. Socialized medicine works, it's not communist, it doesn't destroy our country from within to allow some measure of social justice. WE, The USA, are a rich country, a global super power, maybe the only one left and yet we lack many basic services other less powerful countries take for granted. Providing education is never a bad thing and always pays off by making ours a better society. Providing roads, police, firefighters, and other forms of unecessary infrastructure is never a bad idea. How about higher education? Shouldn't anyone who can make the grades be allowed to rise to their own level of incompetence? Wouldn't society benefit from having more educated people? Even if university isn't your cup of tea vocational training is needed by some, various trades such as electrician and carpenter and many others would improve the lives of many who are economically poor with out giving them the money directly. Education should be of low enough cost that young people can afford to pursue it with out being indebted the rest of their lives... Working people mean more taxes paid and less need to raise taxes, education would mean less young men attracted to gangs because of the feeling of hopelessness in their situation. I want what is best for our country and our world more than i want one side to win over the other... The bottom line is that we must pay taxes to have these things, almost certainly more taxes than we currently pay. I posted a link to a study that showed how low taxes does not contribute to economic success for anyone but the already well off. We have to stop listening to what we want to hear and see what is really going on...

The concept of God that is inherently incompatible with Evolution is the Young Earth Creationist Idea, many Theists prefer to believe that God works though natural means to guide everything in the universe. The problem is that Science and the methods of science do not work when trying to measure the supernatural, they discount the supernatural, not because it cannot exist but because it is not detectable via scientific means... and yes it has been tried... Originally as the enlightenment began to take shape the Christian Bible was considered to be absolutely true but as men began to study the natural world it became apparent the Bible was not an accurate description of reality. BTW, YEC is not limited to Christians nor do Christians have a strangle hold on YEC, other religions with different creation stories and different gods or pantheons of gods out number Christian YECs.

You are correct rigney, facts seldom seem to be an issue these days but to me that is the most basic of our problems. Facts, lies, and spinning those facts until they support lies is dragging us down as a society, what happened to the truth? Does the truth no longer matter if it gets our man elected? I refuse to believe that people really don't want the facts and that spinning the facts to support lies is the American Way, if it is then we really do need a revolution. I think our founding fathers would be shocked to see how low we have sank due to a lack of honor...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120718192607.htm Child's Behavior Linked to Father-Infant Interactions, Study Shows ScienceDaily (July 18, 2012) — Children whose fathers are more positively engaged with them at the age of three months have fewer behavioural problems at the age of twelve months, according to new research funded by the Wellcome Trust. The study suggests that interventions aimed at improving parent-child interaction in the early postnatal period may be beneficial to the child's behaviour later in life. Children whose fathers are more positively engaged with them at the age of three months have fewer behavioural problems at the age of twelve months, according to new research funded by the Wellcome Trust. (Credit: © detailblick / Fotolia)