Moontanman

Not the same thing at all, dogma does not change, religion is embracing the idea of the big bang because it agrees with their dogma, dogma does not change with the evidence, science does, and cosmological theroy is subject to change as is any other scientific theory. Again Dogma is not based in evidence, science is, dogma doesn't change with the evidence, science theories do. Yes this is the way science works, not the dogma of religion.

The idea that the big bang some how validates God is a very dangerous proposition. If you require the big bang was caused by God what do you do if and when they find evidence that there was no big bang? Do you say "oops, I was wrong, there is no God?" or do you say, well no big bang doesn't mean no God no matter what I said last week? Trying to incorporate science into dogma is a bad idea and the idea of a big bang is beginning to loose some support in favor of other ideas like branes colliding in bulk space negating the idea that everything was at one time in a state of immeasurably small nothingness that everything spontaneously came from. Of course the colliding branes answer really only asks more questions as all good answers do. Questions like where did the branes come from? is the multidimensional bulk space really just an eleven dimensional brane in a hyper-dimensional space? meaningless questions? Could it be turtles all the way up and down? The idea of God cannot be successfully defended or disproved by science, science only gives you as good as the evidence it collects, until God decides to reach down and give us a unambiguous sign I see no reason to assume anything about the concept of God other than so far there is no evidence of the existence of god, yes, no, maybe, your guess is as good as mine. I'll do my best to follow the evidence, it's the only rational way to live for me.

So far you have failed to show any reason pedophilia should be considered a sexual orientation. I also see no reason an adult/child sexual relationship should be allowed, no matter how molestation occurs it always causes problems. You've made a lot of claims from pedophiles do not harm children to an oddly limited view of human sexuality, can you back any of your claims up with anything but your opinion?

The Cherokee got the shitty end of the stick for sure as did all Native Americans, the Cherokee's story is especially poignant because they were considered a civilized nation, they had treaties with the USA, the Cherokee were not some separatist group that was threatening the government of the US. The Cherokee had been participating in the life style of the USA for quite some time, they had pretty much converted to western life styles unlike the plains "Indians" who were nomads who's life style was foreign to the western ideas of life, the Cherokee had houses farms and villages but as was par for the course no treaty could protect the weaker party if the stronger doesn't think of them as human beings.

I, like most here, certainly hope Gifford recovers and goes on to a long and productive life. Being a gun owner I am appalled at what happened but I still oppose most forms of gun control. I think it is very much possible this guy did what he did, in part at least, because of the violent nature that political fear mongering has risen to in recent years. That being said i have no doubt this guy was nuts and far too easily influenced by the political rhetoric that is popular today. It is my fervent hope this guy was not intentionally influenced by anyone to do what he did. I know the KKK used to be famous for setting off "lone gunmen" by using physiological influence on vulnerable people to get them to "do the right thing" by rhetoric but not directly telling or asking the person to commit the crime. I have very little use for the extremes of either party but i think it would be very bad for everyone if this guy turns out to have been "set off" intentionally by other people who saw in him the need to "help" the party. The KKK would make appeals to members they saw as unstable (usually young males with mental problems) Like giving speeches where the leader call for someone to do the right thing and kill someone. Intentionally influencing these vulnerable people into doing the KKK's bidding and still have plausible deniability. I hope our political system hasn't fallen that low and I will assume it hasn't, lets hope it never does...

No lies were told, they simply kicked people out because they could, it's a well established part of human interactions, the more powerful get the spoils. I can live with that, i see no reason to expect my people to get their lands back and I see no reason for Israel to leave and give Palestine back to the Arabs or who ever but don't try to say they had some sort of contract with God that gave them the right to take that land, they did it the old fashioned way, power and resolve.

If Israel has the right to kick people out of their homes due to 3000 year old claims then my people have a much more recent claim on the territory the USA took from us by some pretty horrible methods. Being approved by the world doesn't put Israel on a higher moral ground than my people, it just gives them the authority of power, not morals. (religion has nothing to do with morals to begin with and the number of people who believe something doesn't make it correct) Just because a lot of people say Israel can morally kick people out of their homes doesn't give them the moral right to do that. I don't see the Cherokee taking back the Appalachian mountains anytime soon no matter who claims it's ok... and yes they killed millions of us too... I have nothing against Israel or it's people but morally how can what they did be justified?

Cypress, it has been asked several times in this thread to provide a theistic explanation for anything in the natural world that is more useful than a science explanation. so far you have skipped all around it but not provided any such example. I can provide a great many scientific explanations of natural phenomena that work quite well but none from theistic explanations, care to address this?

You are still assuming that people are one or the other, that if you are attracted to adult women there would be no way you could be attracted to an adult man or if you like little girls there is no way you could be attracted to little boys (actually it is generally assumed that a true pedophile desires sex with children their sex is secondary to that attraction) Your ideas fail due to your need for exclusivity, there is no such things as exclusivity in human sexuality, just a spectrum of behaviors. The idea that there is no harm in pedophilia because pedophiles love their child lovers fails in many ways not the least of which is that the child has no choice, if you like little boys is it fair to take one as your lover when he doesn't even know his own sexual orientation yet? Is it right to have sex with a little girl and drop her as soon as she hits puberty? Human beings are not sex toys, even those adults who like to be treated as sex toys (yes there are people who like this) still get to choose who uses them as sex toys, a sexual relationship with a child is almost always doomed to hurt that child at some point.

Yes a corpse is a category of persons, dead persons... Actually I have read of people who did, they tried to keep the corpse fresh as long as possible... I disagree, I am quite sure many people have sexual incounteres with people they are not romantically attracted to, sexual attraction is not romance, it's sexual attraction, two completely different things. No they are not... This is true, i was pointing out how most people think due to the media circus that surrounds such behavior, TV shows that supposedly show real life usually show pedophiles as murderers and killers. I think it's already been said but I'll say it again, people are not exclusively one or the other, there is a spectrum of behaviors, most people fall somewhere between the two extremes of heterosexual and homosexual. So you don't see a difference between a pet and a child? I love my children very much but I don't have sex with them, i love my dogs but I don't have sex with them. I have my doubts about people who only want to have sex with animals, it seems to limiting at the very least, a last resort of someone who cannot attract a human being so they turn to a living sex toy, i think many pedophiles think of their child lovers much the same way, sex toys, but human children grow up into adults so any such "exclusive pedophile" relationship is doomed to hurt someone, usually the child.

I know exactly what you mean about polls, being polled is very painful....

I'm not sure why you are obsessed with this idea of "a" sexual orientation or why pedophilia seems to center so much in your idea but i think you have chased the dog up a tree. No human being is naturally anything but sexual, no human being is exclusively anything but sexual, there are no people who are exclusively attracted to just one thing sexually. Some can have some pretty specific and to the "rest of us" have odd fetishes but fetishes are not sexual orientations... Some people are more one way than another but even pedophiles often have sex with other adults, homosexuals are perfectly capable of having sex with opposite sex partners and necrophiliacs often have children so i think maybe even those who want to "crack open the occasional cold one" also operate quite well with living people. It also true that the only pedophiles we generally hear about are usually really psychopaths that have no real feelings for anyone and will use anyone they can to satisfy their need to dominate and hurt and kill to obtain sexual release. Sadly children are most often the victims of such people because they are most vulnerable. Your idea of sexuality is far too narrow and seems to be centered on justifying your own agenda rather than actually studying anything to do with sexuality. As far as zoophillia goes, while it's odd I think it is closer to just masturbation using a sexual toy than a real mental problem. We train animals to do some pretty odd things, most of which are far outside their natural behaviors, from their perspective using them as sex toys is another weird thing we train them to do. Some people have a large collection of sex toys they use in place of human contact, zoophillia is related to such masturbation toys. To an animal being trained to preform sexually is no worse than being trained to sniff out corpses, or drugs or to jump from a helicopter into a cold rough ocean to rescue a complete stranger. It's just us straight people who have a problem with zoophilia, the vanilla world is so boring

I'm Native American, I'm tired of all you blue eyed devils taking our land and using biological warfare against us, 20 grams of U-238 is exactly what i need to make my spatial implosion bomb, if my people can't have the universe I'll destroy it for all of us!!!! hehehehehehehehehehehehehe It's amazing how many people get their panties in a knot over U-238, you almost certainly have a much more dangerous isotope in your home right now but the media hasn't capitalized on that one yet, i guess they have that one on file for when the rest of the BS runs weak and stops smelling

Cypress, I do not understand your terminology much less your arguments, it's quite possible I'm just not bright enough to understand... but I don't think so. I think you have a distorted understanding of what information is... Information is a human concept, it only has meaning to a human brain, the shapes, order and arrangement of those shapes is only information to a human, the ocean has no concept of anything it is doing, the ocean is a random process that acts randomly on objects, this morning is might be pieces of brick, tomorrow olive snail shells, next week something else. The surf is in constant flux only our snap shots of it look like order, life is the same way, only our snap shots of it look like order, in reality it's a flux of processes that build upon each other to create a complexity we label information... yes

I know that behaviors in humans are often much more complex then in other animals but the idea of sex only with in modern boundaries is... well... modern, other societies have had different takes on sexuality often including almost all age ranges and sexes, even animals. It's easy for us to say our society is better but even in our modern society it's relatively recent that we restrict sexuality to those over 18. In animals benobo's include everyone in public sex games, everyone from infants to adults, they have a particularly non violent society compared to other species of chimps. Now, I'm not trying to promote any sexual agenda but if we are going to look at anything to understand it the first thing you have to do is take away the emotional response and look at what is really happening and why.

Lets see, how would this go, Theist<----------------------------------------------------> Atheist lightning is the wrath of God<-------------------------------->Lightning is electricity from the sky Trying to control where lightning<--------------------------->Put this rod on your house or barn and it will strikes is blasphemy!<--------------------------------------->prevent lightning strikes! Now only churches are being hit...<-------------------------->Now! only churches are being hit... Church says unfair standard being used to judge science and religion when talking about lightning?

I think you are ignoring a vital part of this process, the shapes themselves. The energy of the surf doesn't just sort out material via some fixed parameter of the objects, the energy of the surf creates the shapes as it sorts them. The shapes or the idea the shapes are more or less complex is a human idea. The surf knows nothing of heart shapes or cylinders or tubes, balls, ovals, or some of the really bizarre shapes and things it creates as the waves pound down onto raw materials all sorts of micro and macro shapes are created by the ocean. Everything from the almost organic movements of inlets and barrier islands to dust sized grains of unusually dense sand and everything in between created by and moved and sported out by wave action on the properties of the particles and random occurrences like breaking and grinding of the materials. The surf breaks huge numbers of shells as it pounds the shore then sorts the different shaped pieces that are left over, the result is you find many of certain pieces of shells but never all the pieces of the whole shell in one place. Time is also a big factor, one day a small area of beach might contain 10's of thousands of a particular type of shark teeth, all sorted out and concentrated in one spot. The next day no trace of shark teeth can be found in the very same spot. The surf can create and sort on very short time scales and very long ones but there is no intelligence behind it, it's just what happens when you have raw materials and energy input...

I don't think you can necessarily equate non-procreative sexual desire (in humans or other higher animals) as some how bad or the result of some sort of behavior problem. Sex is used as a bargaining tool in social bonding in many animals across both gender and age barriers.

Talk about having issues, next he'll want a big gavel...

Define what you mean by super massive galaxy. How big is super massive?

Mostly by proxy via Thomas Gold but I would like to read some of those Russian papers if you have links to English translations. But yes, i think it is a very interesting debate, to some extent the ideas as portrayed by Gold are almost too good, he would suggest that life is a natural development of any planetary body with liquid water deep under ground, so Mars would (by Golds hypothesis) certainly have life (and oil) possibly mercury, most of the outer planets large moons even Pluto like objects.

In 2011 we will discover not just alien life but intelligent alien life....

Yeah, the ones with blue fruits emblazoned with a V

Considering that millions, if not billions of goldfish are sold each year for nothing more than live food for other fishes i can see no reason to expect any ethical constraints other than the ones you set for your self in using goldfish for any purpose....

Do you suffocate when you sleep? Fish continue to breath just like we do when they sleep. Most fish can and do pump water through their gills even when swimming.