[quintessential]

Why are there more exepctions to the rules of the period table than there are elements that comply with it? If there is a force of attraction (gravity) between all masses, why is the universe infinitely expanding? If there as a force of repulsion (the 2nd form of gravity) why doesn't it push me away from the earth? How can light be both a particle and a wave at the same time? How can light have a single speed, and be incapable of varying it, if it is a particle? Why are small particles always negative, and larger ones positive or neutral? Why is the universe so fundamentally unbalanced? If antimatter did exist, why is it gone today? If the sun contains enough hydrogen to sustain fusion for so many millions of years, why doesn't it spiral hopelessly out of control and burn out in a few milliseconds? How can time be relative? Why is time travel constantly happening on a quantam level, but impossible on a macro level? Why the hell, basically, if anything?

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I think, therefore I am..... I think?

[Nex]

I suggest you buy a few physics books and start away reading.
All the questions you asked up there can be answered.

[edit: now with improved grammar]

[This message has been edited by Nex (edited January 31, 2001).]

[Impaler]

This is by far the most hilarious thread I've ever read.

Especially that last sentence in quintessential's post. 20 bucks to the first person who can figure out WHAT he said. :P

And yes, you do need to read much more before you decide that science, of which you apparently have no knowledge of, is fake.



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My signature is slightly better than yours.

[Bishop_Six]

Scientists understand a lot about this world. However, they mostly think that they know everything when they are actually far from it. So many of their ideas are pure theory and conjecture. Take for example the widely accepted "fact" of evolution, yet it can in absolutely no way be proven(insert flame war here). I'm a religious person, but I'm not foolish enough to say that I can prove there is a god. It's impossible to do that. That's simply what I believe.

So I'm not too trusting of scientists.

[sacrelicious]

Actually, any reasonable, sane scientist will acknowledge that no fact (hypothesis, theory, even law) can actually be proven. While I know this is true, I'm really tired of people who don't believe in evolution. I'm an open-minded fellow, and I'll readily admit skepticism toward any "accepted" fact, but evolution? Come on, we had this argument about 150 years ago.

Why does religion so often equal ignorance?

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Weaseling out of things is what separates us from the animals... except the weasel.

[Ben Barker]

Yeah. It's pretty much been proven. Even the Pope agrees, albeit he adds with God's help.
Every once in a while new bones come along that tweak the timeline of things, but it did happen.

Fanatics say, "Do you really expect us to believe that all of this happened by chance?"

Um... yeah? It's a lot more plausible than a man that lives in the sky and knows everything and made us out of mud 10,000 years ago or some shit.



[This message has been edited by Ben Barker (edited January 31, 2001).]

[Bishop_Six]

So an all-powerful being is less plausible than all of us forming out of goo and sprouting the occasional organ when needed?

Oh yeah, it has not "pretty much been proven." Seeing as how there is absolutely no evidence suggesting it, and there are dozens of cases opposing it.

[sacrelicious]

What are you talking about? "There is absolutely no evidence suggesting it, and there are dozens of cases opposing it." You're venturing into the land of fairy tales. Thousands of men and women have devoted countless man-hours to the study and documentation of the processes of evolution. It is more plausible that we formed from "goo" than were spontaneously created, considering the mechanics of mutation, cell biology, and survival of the fittest, and the fact that it's taken over 3 BILLION years. Now if there is a God/gods, evolution might be his/her/its/their way of creating life. But regardless of that, evolution is happening and has been for eons. Just because we don't know everything about it, or it doesn't mix well with your personal beliefs, doesn't make it false. If I said, "My religion doesn't believe in cats, therefore there's no such thing as a cat," I'd sound pretty ridiculous, right? Well, that's kind of how you sound now.

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Weaseling out of things is what separates us from the animals... except the weasel.

[Bishop_Six]

This is all very amusing, but you can finish this flame war without me. I'll no longer be taking part. A very wise person once said two things you should never discuss with people are religion and politics.

I can't change your mind and you can't change mine. I really don't care. Have a nice day, sac. No hard feelings.

[Freddio]

quintessential
"How can light have a single speed, and be incapable of varying it, if it is a particle? "

its not a particle.

there are laws which bind this dimeansion together quintessential.

Maby there are a billion dimnsions out there..

Someone go e-mail Steven Hawkings ok..

[Nex]

and besides that light does NOT always have the same speed.

The speed of light varies from medium to medium.

light ist faster in space than in the atmosphere for example.

[the_monkey]

ever seen a evolutonary diagram of a horse? it made me laugh.

i belive in evolution within a species, but not from species to species.

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Maho: the online Comic

tradgedy is when i cut my finger.
comedy is when i fall down a manhole and die.

[cable]

yeah! i completely agree with you there monkey. i believe that there is a God and that he just helped a species "evolve" to help it live in a fast changing envirnment. there is a lot of evidence for evolution but i dont believe we came from monkeys. thats just silly :P i saw a diagram of horse evolution too. its pretty funny

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everybody dies.
Not everybody really lives

WHY NOT LAUGH A LITTLE

[Enayla]

I can't see how a diagram of the evolution of a horse could be more funny than the picture I get in my head when someone says that God created the world.

Or that God designed it, or started it, or whatever.

But that's just me. To me, it seems more plausible that birds, for example, were originally dinosaurs - since evidence have been found for that theory - that evolved into something else during a long period of time. Than that some strange power would have sat down and just invented these things...

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��You can't leave footprints in the sands of time if you're sitting on your butt��
(And who wants to leave buttprints in the sands of time?)

[Ragnarok]

I recomend you read something written by Richard Dawkins. Or by Stephen Jay Gould. Or Lynn Margulis, or George C. Williams or any biologist that really studies if, why, how, and where evolution works.
When you don't know about something you can't critize it.

[sacrelicious]

Hey Bishop, sorry if I went a little over the top. It's an old argument for me. No hard feelings.

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Weaseling out of things is what separates us from the animals... except the weasel.

[cable]

your right bishop, we christians do have a history of shoving. even i do! sorry every one :P what i believe is cool as good as the next guys/girls belief.

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everybody dies.
Not everybody really lives

WHY NOT LAUGH A LITTLE

[shahar2k]

I tend to take the side of the all encompasing agnostic, I think everyone should... you see the truth lies in the fact that the human knowlege base lacks both the scope and the definition to entirely understand the world around us, we are as blind to the smallest details, as we are to things beyond our vision.
but you have to understand that all truths you believe in yourself have to be those which make the world a more stuctured place to you.
if you believe in god or in pure science, it is only because it helps you make sense from the chaos around you, and it helps you put things into easily (mentally) digestible pieces so that you can claim that you know them.

I take a harsher stance, I claim that I know nothing, but what I base my undersrtanding on is solely what I can break down, in my case, science makes sense to me, lots of it's pieces just fit together, but in somone elses case it might not be. all you have to do is keep, in the back of your head, the truth that there is no way that you know the truth.

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Maybe I'm paranoid... maybe it's you!

[Lukias]

Oh poo's.

We were genetically engineered/enhanced from our cousins(the ape'e poo's) by 21 different alien species and our currently under observation, as we have been for millenia.

- Pssst they speak to me *runs off*

[Ben Barker]

Just an FYI:

We didn't evolve from monkeys. Monkeys and humans evolved from a common ancestor.

Science doesn't pretend to know the answers to everything. People who believe in science as a religion are fanatics. It is not a religion. It is a different thing.

[This message has been edited by Ben Barker (edited February 01, 2001).]

[aquamire]

Now lets say if there was a God. I think god was a very lazy kinda guy.. so he came up with evolution. Saved him a hell of a lot of work, didnt it?

Technology has reached the point where computers can design machines, using simple rules of evolution, and neural networking. A simulated evolution project was used to take a jet engine, and actually improve upon it to make it work better, without any human intervention.

Ever heard of the Golum project? http://golem03.cs-i.brandeis.edu/download.html Check it out.. let machines evolve on your computer (without you interveining) and even trade them over the net. Hell, if you have a 3d printer, print one out. They also have a version that uses distributed networking, so you have a bunch of these little critters running around over a virtual landscape all across the internet.. you might even end up with a few on your computer that came from somebody else's computer.



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-Aquamire
"Quotes are for mislead wussies." - Me.

[the_monkey]

aquamire thats freaky. technology, please stop. we are not progressing.

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Maho: the online Comic

tradgedy is when i cut my finger.
comedy is when i fall down a manhole and die.

[A.Buttle]

Urgh... Homer no function well beer without.

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Joe Dillingham
[email protected]

[This message has been edited by your mutha (edited April 15, 197-deuce).]

[Bishop_Six]

I don't mind if someone believes in evolution. That's their opinion, not mine. However, I do mind when someone won't accept that someone believes differently and tries to shove their belief down the other person's throat(christians do this a lot).

I'm not mad, sacrelicious, but I have better things to do with my time than bicker.

[shahar2k]

yup I think buttle said it perfectly

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Maybe I'm paranoid... maybe it's you!

[strata]

Actually, the existence of evolution has been proven practically.

One example is a group of scientists that took a few lizards from their home environment and placed them in a place totally diffrent and unhospitable to them. Everyone naturally thought they'd die out, but they're still here today (this was like 15 yrs ago)... they evolved into smaller bodies with longer legs, less color and thicker skin (or something like that) and don't really resemble what they once were that much any more. Hence evolution.

That's just proof that it exists and occurs, I'm not saying that it all started that way since that would would be saying that I know something I possibly couldn't know (I don't believe in creation tho)

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Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?

[This message has been edited by strata (edited February 02, 2001).]

[the_monkey]

quote:

---

Originally posted by strata:
Actually, the existence of evolution has been proven practically.

One example is a group of scientists that took a few lizards from their home environment and placed them in a place totally diffrent and unhospitable to them. Everyone naturally thought they'd die out, but they're still here today (this was like 15 yrs ago)... they evolved into smaller bodies with longer legs, less color and thicker skin (or something like that) and don't really resemble what they once were that much any more. Hence evolution.

That's just proof that it exists and occurs, I'm not saying that it all started that way since that would would be saying that I know something I possibly couldn't know (I don't believe in creation tho)

---

yes strata, that proves that evolution occurs within a specis. but not from specis to specis. (am i spelling specis right?)




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Maho: the online Comic

tradgedy is when i cut my finger.
comedy is when i fall down a manhole and die.

[jcterminal]

your god is science.

your science is god.

both are lies.

can we please stop rehashing the SAME FUCKING ARGUMENT over and over again?

we both know the reason we exist is because we're being bred into war machines by the proto-Gods from a malevolent galaxy.

knock it off.

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j.c.terminal
mind
body
soul

[Affected]

I don't understand the logic there, monkey...
If small changes can happen, why couldn't a lot of small changes occur in a species with the result of a new species being born?

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Affected

Democracy is a lie

http://affected.xs.mw

[Count Zero]

Jcterminal, if you don't like the conversation, then just don't fucking participate.
Close your eyes. Do not read further. It's that simple.
I find talking with people with opposing opinions to my own very rewarding. It can be very annoying, yes, but also very useful.
shahar2k, thank you. You saved me a lot of trouble with your comment about agnosticism. I'm an agnostic, and believe that it is arrogant of man to believe they can describe their maker in words, much less be able to understand it. I believe that through science, we can find glimpses of the truth, but never the whole truth. I think people are just incabable, basically.
As for evolution, I believe in it. As a matter of fact, I don't think it's a matter of faith...