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Michelle
Moistened Bint
Joined: 28 Oct 2004
Posts: 10233
Location: At my desk
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 Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2005 1:59 am Post subject: |
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| Jammikins wrote: | 'splain to him gently that even if this were possible, it still doesn't solve the problem of origins. It just moves the problem to a different planet.
Put simply "OK, fine..how did the alien race get its start?" |
Maybe they were 'planted' by other aliens.  I'll ask him when his father brings him home.
| jonnyv wrote: | | Has he been talking to Tom Cruise? |
I think he's been reading about scientology.
| Cohiba wrote: | | HE been watching to much stargate? Or have you? |
I'd say 'yes' but it isn't on here at the moment. 
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Mr. Snrub
Prince
Joined: 20 May 2003
Posts: 1916
Location: Someplace far away...yes, that'll do.
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| Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 10:40 am Post subject: |
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| jbyram2 wrote: | | Michelle wrote: | My 14 y.o. boy-child's theory is that we were 'planted' here by some aliens from another planet. He doesn't specify which one.
Future looney in the making?  |
'splain to him gently that even if this were possible, it still doesn't solve the problem of origins. It just moves the problem to a different planet.
Put simply "OK, fine..how did the alien race get its start?" |
Well, it's obvious! Sometime in the future, when we become sufficiently advanced, we travel back in time to plant the aliens in the first place.
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End of Days
Squire
Joined: 21 Dec 2005
Posts: 6
Location: Michigan, USA
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| Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 12:08 pm Post subject: |
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Dan
Actually the best explanation I have EVER found was documented in Venus on the Half Shell by Kilgore Trout.
I must however confess, you were correct on your initial assessment; I am a Looney! The ideacenter.org is a favorite site of mine but it is not mine, I am another Dennis Wagner, and actually kind of led you all on just to see if any here had an open mind not afraid of the possibility that the world isnt quite as round as we have been taught since that Scopes Monkey thingie.
I found this place and this particular string while doing a google for some research for a current project. I am quite please that I found you though; it is comforting to find out that there are others.
No, Dan I fear that I travel in circles much more sinister and diabolical than the ideacenter.com; I am in fact a rabid proponent of a literal creation and young earth so yes, your worst fears are this day realized. I am not however in favor of ID being taught in the public school system, they have such a propensity to screw things up you know.
In my research I did come across a couple sites that I thought would be of interest to this group. Centered around a sub culture of sorts that though they
well, best look for your self. http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com and in particular http://www.raidersnewsupdate.com/stargates It seems that there are people who are against the teaching of ID because they believe it will be used as an explanation to pacify the masses when demonical aliens reveal themselves to mankind (probably this year so be wary), and so something good will be corrupted and used to promote evil and the doom of all mankind. It all seems to tie in with numerous ancient cultures foreseeing the end of this age of man coming in just a couple years, as well does much of Christendom. The Mayans calculated the precise timing to be December 21, 2012 at 11:11AM GMT. The theories on just what will happen then range from a temporal wave causing the immediate destruction of all reality to fish suddenly gaining the ability to quote Monty Python without ever having even watched any.
Another site that I would recommend to those with a healthy dose of curiosity and way too much free time is: http://harvestrain0.tripod.com/id15.html In the bottom 40% of the page there are many links to audio files on lectures, some of which are very good and not just simple nonsense spouted by the Ill informed I think was the thought? Look particularly at those by Dr. Thomas Kindell, Dr. Duane T. Gish, Dr. Henry Morris, and especially Dr. Werner Gitt. Again, this is for those not of faint heart unwilling to consider other realities.
On a totally other note, Ill add a post to the Nano Tube Ribbon discussion that those who have an interest in technology will enjoy.
Dennis Wagner
(Just a simple Chef) |
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Sir Hamster of Elderberry
KWSN ArchBishop
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 5117
Location: Beer City, Cheese Quadrant
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| Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 1:19 pm Post subject: |
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Dennis,
Darn it! Just when I had a nice response all thought out, you go and get both reasonable AND weird. Simultaneously too, nice trick. 
Umm ... you are aware that Venus is a satire??? On a tangent, did you happen to catch what Vonnegut had to say about ID in his recent interviews?
Around this place, Looney is a badge of honor. Wear it well, and with a nicely color-coordinated hat! 
| End of Days wrote: | | No, Dan I fear that I travel in circles much more sinister and diabolical than the ideacenter.com; I am in fact a rabid proponent of a literal creation and young earth so yes, your worst fears are this day realized. I am not however in favor of ID being taught in the public school system, they have such a propensity to screw things up you know. |
| SHoE wrote: | | One final comment: I have no problems with ID as a belief, but trying to call ID a science is just wrong, and a disservice to both Faith and Reason. |
I find it interesting that we seem to have reached the same conclusion (about teaching ID in schools) for different reasons. What I find sinister is teaching false-reasoning. I suspect you might feel the same about teaching false-faith. I say we should declare mutual victory and leave it at that (Victory party in the Castle Lounge at 4:30 everybody!  ). Now, if only we can get a few million other people to understand the real issues ... 
No time to follow your links today, and quite frankly, I'm not sure I want to go wading so far into the deep-end of the internet. I'll take a peek after I get som eof this work-stuff off my desk.
Regards,
Dan |
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Sir Hamster of Elderberry
KWSN ArchBishop
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Location: Beer City, Cheese Quadrant
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 10:45 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | News
Nature 439, 6-7 (5 January 2006) | doi:10.1038/439006b
Intelligent design verdict set to sway other cases
Emma Marris, Washington DC
Failure in court sets offers evolutionary precedent.
A high-profile trial centred on the teaching of evolution is over. High-school students in Dover, Pennsylvania, will not now hear an announcement promoting intelligent design the idea that an intelligent creator shaped today's organisms before taking lessons on evolution. On 20 December, federal judge John Jones struck down a local school-board decision in a scathing 139-page rebuke to the intelligent-design movement. But other challenges to evolution are simmering across the country and the Dover decision could influence their outcome, some say.
Such fights usually originate at the state level in the form of legislation or the setting of state-wide education standards or at the school-district level, where local standards and curricula are generally set.
A recent study from the Washington-based Thomas B. Fordham Institute into science curriculum standards gave failing grades to 15 states (see map). Alabama students, for instance, learn from biology textbooks adorned with a sticker describing evolution as "controversial". But in Ohio, which passed, some students are taught from a state-approved lesson plan called "critical analysis of evolution", in which they research and present pro- and anti-evolution viewpoints.
Robin Hovis, a member of the Ohio state board of education, says the Dover case may affect the future of the lesson plan. "It certainly gave those of us on the board who objected renewed hope," he adds. In Cobb County, Georgia, an appeals court is set to rule on a lower-court judgement deeming similar stickers unconstitutional.
And in Kansas, a school-board primary election next August could reshape the state's educational landscape. Board members who edited the education standards to include "scientific criticisms" of evolution face challenges by moderate Republicans who want such language weeded out (see Nature 438, 267; 2005).
In another twist, a group of Christian schools is suing the University of California for refusing to recognize certain high-school courses, including biology classes that use textbooks taking an anti-evolution view. The university has filed for dismissal, and expects to hear from the judge in a few months. "The Dover verdict says schools can't teach these non-scientific ideas as science, so that supports us," says Christopher Patti, a lawyer with the university.
Legislation promoting intelligent design or similar anti-evolution ideas was introduced in more than a dozen states in 2005. Most died a hasty death, according to Nick Matzke, spokesman for the National Center for Science Education, a California-based non-profit organization that fights for evolution education. He and others hope that the Dover decision will help quash the promotion of intelligent design, which they say is a legal strategy for introducing religion into the classroom. "Court decisions never resolve social issues, and it won't here," says Matzke. "But it will give us a little breathing space. Intelligent design as a strategy is probably toast."
THOMAS B. FORDHAM INST.
Naturally, proponents of the theory disagree. Casey Luskin, a lawyer at the Discovery Institute, an intelligent-design think-tank in Seattle, Washington, says the Dover decision will have a "negligible effect". "You cannot change the facts of biology through a judicial ruling," he argues. |
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Sir Hamster of Elderberry
KWSN ArchBishop
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Location: Beer City, Cheese Quadrant
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 11:06 am Post subject: |
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Whoops! Here we go again!
| Quote: | News Feature
Nature 439, 10-12 (5 January 2006) | doi:10.1038/439010a
Our Universe: Outrageous fortune
Geoff Brumfiel1
1. Geoff Brumfiel is Nature's physical sciences Washington correspondent.
A growing number of cosmologists and string theorists suspect the form of our Universe is little more than a coincidence. Are these harmless thought experiments, or a challenge to science itself? Geoff Brumfiel investigates.
Why are we here? It's a question that has troubled philosophers, theologians and those who've had one drink too many. But theoretical physicists have a more essentialist way of asking the question: why is there anything here at all?
For two decades now, theorists in the think-big field of cosmology have been stymied by a mathematical quirk in their equations. If the number controlling the growth of the Universe since the Big Bang is just slightly too high, the Universe expands so rapidly that protons and neutrons never come close enough to bond into atoms. If it is just ever-so-slightly too small, it never expands enough, and everything remains too hot for even a single nucleus to form. Similar problems afflict the observed masses of elementary particles and the strengths of fundamental forces.
In other words, if you believe the equations of the world's leading cosmologists, the probability that the Universe would turn out this way by chance are infinitesimal one in a very large number. "It's like you're throwing darts, and the bullseye is just one part in 10^120 of the dart board," says Leonard Susskind, a string theorist based at Stanford University in California. "It's just stupid."
One in a zillion
Physicists have historically approached this predicament with the attitude that it's not just dumb luck. In their view, there must be something underlying and yet-to-be-discovered setting the value of these variables. "The idea is that we have got to work harder because some principle is missing," says David Gross, a Nobel-prizewinning theorist and director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, California.
But things have changed in the past few years, says astronomer Bernard Carr of Queen Mary, University of London, UK. String theorists and cosmologists are increasingly turning to dumb luck as an explanation. If their ideas stand up, it would mean the constants of nature are meaningless. "In the past, many people were almost violently opposed to that idea because it wasn't seen as proper science," Carr says. "But there's been a change of attitude."
Much of that change stems from work showing that our Universe may not be unique. Since the early 1980s, some cosmologists have argued that multiple universes could have formed during a period of cosmic inflation that preceded the Big Bang. More recently, string theorists have calculated that there could be 10^500 universes, which is more than the number of atoms in our observable Universe. Under these circumstances, it becomes more reasonable to assume that several would turn out like ours. It's like getting zillions and zillions of darts to throw at the dart board, Susskind says. "Surely, a large number of them are going to wind up in the target zone." And of course, we exist in our particular Universe because we couldn't exist anywhere else.
It's an intriguing idea with just one problem, says Gross: "It's impossible to disprove." Because our Universe is, almost by definition, everything we can observe, there are no apparent measurements that would confirm whether we exist within a cosmic landscape of multiple universes, or if ours is the only one. And because we can't falsify the idea, Gross says, it isn't science. Or at least, it isn't science in any conventional sense of the word. "I think Gross sees this as science taking on some of the traits of religion," says Carr. "In a sense he's correct, because things like faith and beauty are becoming a component of the discussion."
And yet in the overlapping circles of cosmology and string theory, the concept of a landscape of universes is becoming the dominant view. "I really hope we have a better idea in the future," says Juan Maldacena, a string theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, summing up the views of many in the field. "But this idea of a landscape is the best we have today." The stakes are high: string theorists know that pursuing an unverifiable theory could look like desperation, but they fear that looking for meaning in a meaningless set of numbers may be equally fruitless.
Kepler's error
At the core of this dilemma is a concept known as the anthropic principle: the idea that things appear the way they do because we live at a certain spot in the Universe. It's not a new concept, and has previously been regarded more as philosophy than science.
Unfortunately we are unable to provide accessible alternative text for this.
But some scientists say that it offers a useful change of perspective. "It's very important to take into account stuff like this, or you can come to completely incorrect conclusions about the Universe," argues Max Tegmark, a cosmologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. "For example, you might assume our Solar System is typical, but a typical point in space is some intergalactic void where you can't see a single star."
Failing to consider our observational location has burned scientists in the past. The sixteenth-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler spent years trying to understand what seemed to be the even, geometrical spacing of our planets from the Sun. Kepler searched for meaning in the planets because he thought our Solar System was unique; today's scientists understand that our Solar System is but one of probably billions in the Galaxy. Under such circumstances it seems reasonable to assume the planets are spaced according to little more than random chance.
In much the same way as Kepler worried about planetary orbits, cosmologists now puzzle over numbers such as the cosmological constant, which describes how quickly the Universe expands. The observed value is so much smaller than existing theories suggest, and yet so precisely constrained by observations, that theorists are left trying to figure out a deeper meaning for why the cosmological constant has the value it does.
Many are still searching for some great unifying theory that would explain these variables. But others have started to believe that, like Kepler, today's physicists are looking for meaning where there is none. "In recent years, it was looking more and more to me like the laws of nature were environmental," says Susskind, who has just written a book making this argument (L. Susskind The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design. Little Brown, 2005). He suspects that there are many universes, all with different values for these variables. Just as human life had to evolve on a planet with water, he says, perhaps we also had to evolve in a Universe where atoms could form.
Until recently, Susskind was in the minority. Hints of multiple universes, however, were given by a cosmological theory known as inflation. Inflation is the leading theory of the early Universe; it postulates that a period of rapid early expansion created the flat and uniform cosmos we see today. One version of inflation theory, devised in the early 1980s, suggests that inflation occurred even before the Big Bang. In this version, the expanding cosmos was foamy and energetic, says Steven Weinberg, a researcher at the University of Texas, Austin. "Every once in a while, one part of the Universe would expand and become a Big Bang," he says. "And these Big Bangs would all have different values for their fundamental constants."
Strings attached
In 1987, Weinberg made a prediction that turned out to support the idea of an anthropic Universe. Preliminary observations indicated that the cosmological constant was zero, but Weinberg reasoned that if the constant was constrained by our anthropic perspective then it would be small, so as not to interfere with the formation of galaxies, stars and planets, but non-zero, because it would be essentially random. "That prediction has since been confirmed by observations of supernovae and the microwave background," says Weinberg, who admits he was a reluctant convert to the idea.
| Quote: |
Landscape of possibilities: the geometry of string theory predicts as many as 10^500 universes. |
The latest circumstantial arguments for multiple universes come from string theory. String theory posits that tiny strings vibrating in the fabric of space-time give rise to the multitude of particles and forces in the macroscopic Universe. Although string theory lacks experimental support, it attracts broad interest because it seems to offer a route to a grand theory of everything a way to unify relativity with quantum mechanics.
But as theorists developed string theory, they discovered that the equations gave rise to multiple solutions, each of which represented a universe with different physical properties. "The hope always was that we would understand why one solution was picked out," says Joe Polchinski, a string theorist at the Kavli Institute. But despite their best efforts, after two decades theorists are still stuck with a million different solutions for the equations, and therefore a million potential universes.
This landscape of solutions, as it became known in the community, was both troubling and intriguing. On the one hand, the theory stubbornly refused to yield a single solution resembling our own cosmos, but then, some argued, that might also explain the cosmological constant's apparent randomness. If these many solutions actually represent millions of universes, then the idea that one had worked out just right for us wasn't so far-fetched.
Ignorance is bliss
The snag was that one million universes wasn't enough. To explain the perfectly adjusted cosmological constant one would need at least 10^60 universes, says Polchinski. Then, in 2000, he and Raphael Bousso at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, calculated that there could be a lot more than a million solutions. "The calculation had such topological complexity that you could potentially get 10^500 universes," Polchinski says. With so many solutions, says Weinberg, it becomes easier to imagine that we happen to live in a Universe that seems tailored for our existence.
Easy to imagine, hard to prove. Because other universes would be causally separated from our own, it seems impossible to tell whether our cosmos is the only one, or one of many. Most scientists find this disturbing. Talk of a Universe fine-tuned for life has already attracted supporters of intelligent design, who claim that an intelligent force shaped evolution. If there's no way to tell whether the values of scientific constants are a coincidence, the movement's followers argue, then why not also consider them evidence of God's handiwork?
The anthropic reasoning behind the landscape of universes is disturbing on another level, says Gross. Most theories grow stronger with each observation that matches their predictions. However, for the anthropic principle, random chance is the main factor. Patterns and correlations, the stones from which scientific theories are built, weaken it. In other words, he says: "The power of the principle is strongest where you have ignorance."
That may be, but measurements that could support anthropic reasoning are in the works. In 2007, researchers at Europe's CERN particle physics centre in Geneva, Switzerland, will turn on the Large Hadron Collider, a massive accelerator that will probe particle energies never before seen by researchers. The accelerator might detect so-called supersymmetric particles, predicted by some as a way of unifying the strong and weak nuclear forces with the electromagnetic force, an important step in uniting all the forces of physics within a single theory.
These particles could also hint at whether we live in one of many universes, says Nima Arkani-Hamed, a string theorist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. If the collider detects certain types of super-symmetric particles, he says, it will indicate another fine-tuning in the cosmos the ratio of the weak nuclear force to the strength of gravity. The anthropic argument is the same: if the number was off by as little as one part in 10^30, then we would not be here to discuss it.
It might seem that the detection of a second, perfectly tuned number would only exacerbate the debate, but Arkani-Hamed argues that it will have the opposite effect. Unlike the cosmological constant, which has had a controversial history even in cosmology, this fine-tuning would appear in the standard model, which most physicists consider to be the most complete physical theory ever developed and tested. It would strengthen the case for the arbitrary nature of certain fundamental constants, Arkani-Hamed contends: "These measurements wouldn't directly prove or disprove the landscape, but they would be a very big push in that direction."
Leap of faith
Still, many scientists distrust the concept and continue to seek alternative explanations. Among them is Lisa Randall, also at Harvard. Randall suspects that multiple universes are a mirage resulting from the unrefined equations of string theory. "You really need to explore alternatives before taking such radical leaps of faith," she contends. And with no foreseeable way to detect other universes, Gross feels that such leaps of faith should not be taken. "I feel that it's a rather extreme conclusion to reach at this point," he says.
Susskind, too, finds it "deeply, deeply troubling" that there's no way to test the principle. But he is not yet ready to rule it out completely. "It would be very foolish to throw away the right answer on the basis that it doesn't conform to some criteria for what is or isn't science," he says.
Gross believes that the emergence of multiple universes in science has its origins in theorists' 20-year struggle to explain the finely tuned numbers of the cosmos. "People in string theory are very frustrated, as am I, by our inability to be more predictive after all these years," he says. But that's no excuse for using such "bizarre science", he warns. "It is a dangerous business." |
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-- Have you seen my goat?
Last edited by Sir Hamster of Elderberry on Thu Jan 05, 2006 3:29 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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jonnyv
Happy Fun Admin
Joined: 15 May 2002
Posts: 2098
Location: Scottsdale, AZ
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 11:20 am Post subject: |
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Interesting article. It looks like the numbers didn't copy and paste very well. I think numbers like 10500 are really 10^500 - 10 to the 500th power - mind bogglingly huge numbers.
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Sir Hamster of Elderberry
KWSN ArchBishop
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 5117
Location: Beer City, Cheese Quadrant
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 3:35 pm Post subject: |
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| jonnyv wrote: | | Interesting article. It looks like the numbers didn't copy and paste very well. I think numbers like 10500 are really 10^500 - 10 to the 500th power - mind bogglingly huge numbers. |
Fixed!
I don't know about the rest of you, but my mind starts boggling somewhere between fingers and toes (~10^1.2).
ni! i!u |
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jonnyv
Happy Fun Admin
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 3:38 pm Post subject: |
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10^1.2...is that supposed to be hte "between" number or were you a woodshop teacher in a previous life?
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Sir Hamster of Elderberry
KWSN ArchBishop
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 5117
Location: Beer City, Cheese Quadrant
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| Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2006 3:57 pm Post subject: |
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Dang it! Don't make me count that high again!! I just got my shoes back on!!! 
ni! i!u |
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Lady DC
Princess DC
Joined: 24 May 2002
Posts: 2516
Location: Hotlanta, Ga
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| Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 12:44 am Post subject: |
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| Michelle wrote: | My 14 y.o. boy-child's theory is that we were 'planted' here by some aliens from another planet. He doesn't specify which one.
Future looney in the making? |
Ahh, a mother who is teaching her son well. My 8 year old son brought up the same hypothesis. He did not say that he believed it but he went through the "what if" scenario. It was fun listening to him expand the discussion with his imagination. And in some ways brought up some very interesting points. I wonder if there is such a thing as a red headed looney. Poor kid has a blonde for a mom though.
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|----Ni---Ni----|
Goddess of Spankings. 
Leon Day is coming. A most wonderful day to celebrate.
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End of Days
Squire
Joined: 21 Dec 2005
Posts: 6
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| Posted: Fri Jan 06, 2006 11:14 am Post subject: |
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I remember reading a book a few years ago titled The Number of the Beast, It was about a guy who created a machine that allowed travel between different universes; he installed it in a flying car. In the story he calculated the number of possible alternate universes to be 6 to the 6th power to the 6th power. Possible becaues these other universes were actually created when someone it in their mind with enough detail for it to spring into existance, so many of the worlds envisioned by writers realy did exist.
BTW, anyone joining the Haggis Hunt this year?
http://haggishunt.scotsman.com/
Dennis Wagner |
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Cohiba
Prince
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Location: A tabbaco plantation
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| Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 10:19 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: | Proponents of intelligent design, or ID, have tried in recent years to promote the idea of a supreme being by discounting science because it can't explain everything in nature.
"People in the ID community have said that we don't even know how bees fly," Altshuler said. "We were finally able to put this one to rest. We do have the tools to understand bee flight and we can use science to understand the world around us."
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Here is the entire article
Scientists figure out how bees fly
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Sir Hamster of Elderberry
KWSN ArchBishop
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| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 12:23 pm Post subject: |
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| Cohiba wrote: | | Quote: | Proponents of intelligent design, or ID, have tried in recent years to promote the idea of a supreme being by discounting science because it can't explain everything in nature.
"People in the ID community have said that we don't even know how bees fly," Altshuler said. "We were finally able to put this one to rest. We do have the tools to understand bee flight and we can use science to understand the world around us."
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Here is the entire article
Scientists figure out how bees fly |
So that's what all the buzz is about!
*** BUT ***
I have to take issue with the practice of trying to counter every point presented by supporters of ID. This makes the tacit assumption that ID is based on a rational argument. We could argue rationally forever and never make any progress, because the hypotheses of ID are not rational. In fact, a lot of the arguments we see/hear are just that; pointless words for/againsts an idea that is not based on reason. For the same reason, ID can lead to irrational conclusions.
Throughout this discussion, I have tried very hard to avoid stepping on anyone's beliefs (including my own). I don't mean to offend, and I don't really expect to change anyones mind either. At risk of repeating myself, science cannot be used to prove faith. AND, if it could prove faith, we wouldn't like the conclusions. Some things we just have to take on faith.
Dan |
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A Shrubbery
Prince
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| Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2006 5:18 pm Post subject: |
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I know I've never had to rely on rational thought and facts to win an argument. Just ask my husband.
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Sir Hamster of Elderberry
KWSN ArchBishop
Joined: 20 May 2002
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| Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 10:00 am Post subject: |
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That's the other point I've been trying to make; Some things aren't determined by logic and reason.
I'll shut-up again now.
D |
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Grizzly
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| Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 12:03 pm Post subject: |
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| End of Days wrote: | I remember reading a book a few years ago titled The Number of the Beast, It was about a guy who created a machine that allowed travel between different universes; he installed it in a flying car. In the story he calculated the number of possible alternate universes to be 6 to the 6th power to the 6th power. Possible becaues these other universes were actually created when someone it in their mind with enough detail for it to spring into existance, so many of the worlds envisioned by writers realy did exist.
BTW, anyone joining the Haggis Hunt this year?
http://haggishunt.scotsman.com/
Dennis Wagner |
Hi + Ni Dennis !!
The book you refer' to was written by Robert Heinlein (*) MANY years ago .
Hope you have read some of his other novels , in particular "Stranger In a Strange Land" , " The trials of Johb (*)" and others . All very readable and entertaining - alas - God and his disciples exsist (*) in his and his readers imagination only (alledgedly ) (*) . Perhaps you have read R . Hubbard (*) also ?
Please ina Looney Bin , do not bring up Si-Fi as any sort of verification . ( Have you read "A canticle for Lebowitz" perchance ? ) Good stories abound in liter'ature , but science they are not (including Larry Niven and Purnell (*) , bow scrape (*)) .
You appear very lucid and Literate (I know you use a spell checker'er) - but fair words and an apparent knowledge of a subject close to your heart ( I assume) makes for a missguided (*) ackknowledgement (*) of something that Dawkins found problems with . Ask Daewin (*) .
Thankfully you have NOT brought up the SETI link , but if you do - prepare for boarding (Umm Boredom !! )
I do remain attentive and reasonably open minded about this ID concept , however I know there ain't no Haven(*) but I pray there ain't no Hell
Regds Grizz (AKA Chris )
PS Grizz is excused a spell checker (Editor of the KoKC ) - (*) indicate errors OR a point (or your own interpetayion) to be researched/thubked .
PPS For all other readers , 666 is the number of the beast .
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Oh Bugger Forgot again - or is it Oh Father Reboot again ?
Ps Grizz in his second childhood - but not his last !
Edihtor of the KoKC (excused spel;l checher'er)
AND NI !!! Tophat 10e
[img]http://www.katrinashome.com/grizzly_counter.php[/[url=http://www.katrinashome.com/] ][/url] |
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FiddleAbout
Knight
Joined: 21 Feb 2006
Posts: 29
Location: UK
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| Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 3:03 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | I have to take issue with the practice of trying to counter every point presented by supporters of ID. This makes the tacit assumption that ID is based on a rational argument. |
There is no need to offer any rational reposte when a stupid one using their logic can point out the stupidity of their claims...
I recall doing a calculation in the past when arguing with a creationist on a forum (that was before they dropped the creationist tag and started suggesting they were basing their views on science) ...
There are at least 1,000,000 known species of insects and probably many times that. (I live in the sticks and I'm pretty sure that some of the little critters I swat every summer are completely unknown to science - certainly every one seems different from the last - just how do they find mates?)
There have been about 2,000,000 days since the world was created in 4000BC (I think they still stick to that one)
To spend every other day of eternity designing a new bug smacks of serious mental instability |
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Sir Hamster of Elderberry
KWSN ArchBishop
Joined: 20 May 2002
Posts: 5117
Location: Beer City, Cheese Quadrant
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| Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 5:26 pm Post subject: |
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| FiddleAbout wrote: | | Quote: | | I have to take issue with the practice of trying to counter every point presented by supporters of ID. This makes the tacit assumption that ID is based on a rational argument. |
There is no need to offer any rational reposte when a stupid one using their logic can point out the stupidity of their claims...
... |
Well ... yes ... but calling someones deeply held beliefs stupid is not the best way to win friends and influence people. I prefer to break the problem down to its most basic level and make my case politely. People will listen, or maybe not. They might view things differently after they have a chance to think it over for a month or two. Or not. I don't have any expectation to win the arguement. This is why I'm taking a break from "active" arguement - because it was becoming just that, and it doesn't bring me any pleasure to argue with friends.
More ID fun from the backup forum:
http://www.kwsn.nl/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=526
http://www.kwsn.nl/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=407
| FiddleAbout wrote: | ...
To spend every other day of eternity designing a new bug smacks of serious mental instability |
Sounds like my kind of creation engineer!
ni! i!u
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-- Have you seen my goat? |
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A Shrubbery
Prince
Joined: 24 Jun 2004
Posts: 1861
Location: Pacific NW
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| Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 11:50 pm Post subject: |
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All things dank and dangerous, all creatures short and squat.
All things foul and cancerous, the Lord God made the lot.
*liberally stolen from the Contractual Obligations CD of Monty Python.
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A Shrubbery for Prez. Let's put more bushes in the whitehouse.
KWSN - A Shrubbery
Shrubbing since 2000 for the KaNI!ghts. |
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