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How Water Forms in Interstellar Space at 10K
KentuckyFC writes "Water is the most abundant solid material in space. But although astronomers see it on planets, moons, in comets and in interstellar clouds, nobody has been able to show how it forms. In theory, it should form easily when oxygen and atomic hydrogen meet. The problem is that there is not enough of it floating around as gas in interstellar dust clouds. So instead, the thinking is that water must form when atomic hydrogen interacts with frozen solid oxygen on the surface of dust grains in these clouds. Now Japanese astronomers have demonstrated this process for the first time in the lab in conditions that simulate interstellar space. That's cool because all the water in the solar system, including almost every drop you drink on Earth today, must have formed in exactly this way more than 5 billion years ago in a pre-solar dustcloud (abstract)."
Note that the "K" you mention in the article is always capitalized, and, yes, it's standard nomenclature to use a postfixed "K" to represent Kelvins.
10K means 10 Kelvins, that is, 10 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. It's not degrees Kelvin. 10k would be 10000 of something that is either unitless or of units that are not given.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
The more we learn, the more obvious it becomes that life, far from being a unique or rare thing in the universe, is actually an inevitable natural process, and will consistently and repeatedly erupt under environmental conditions that are actually very common across the universe.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
10K, not 10k...
10K is not vague. It is 10 Kelvin
No, not at 10k, but at 10K, in other words 10 degrees .
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Where do all the Oxygen atoms come from ... I'm guessing fusion from within stars?
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That's cool because all the water in the solar system, including almost every drop you drink on Earth today, must have formed in exactly this way more than 5 billion years ago in a pre-solar dustcloud
Why must it? Could you justify that statement?
Gravity alone tends to cause interstellar clouds to collapse into stellar accretion disks, and then into stars and planets.
Although the Hydrogen and Oxygen in the original cloud may have had almost zero chance of getting together, once the cloud collapsed into relatively dense planetary atmospheres, why couldn't water have formed then?
I think this is just an evil plot to get us all downmodded -1 redundant ;)
We all replied with the same thing within seconds of one another.
The parent of your post knew the answer, and knew we'd all correct him at the same time!
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in the immortal words of Keanu Reeves: "Whoaaa"
also forming in that dustcloud 5 billion years ago were minute traces of lysergic acid diethylamide. slight traces of which may also enable you to appreciate the far-out implications of you being a 5 billion year old dustcloud waterchild
duuude
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I knew my tap water tasted funny.
You're saying ALL the water in Earth's oceans came from hydrogen atoms interacting with solid oxygen on the surface of cosmic dust particles ??? I think it's more likely that molecular oxygen and hydrogen reacted at higher temperature on our planet (much like a rocket taking off into space).
You don't have to try it figure it out. God just creates it. No scientific explaination needed. Now wasn't that easy.
Why must it? Could you justify that statement?
The problem is that the Earth doesn't have sufficient gravity to hold free hydrogen. Free hydrogen on earth goes by by into space. So that almost automatically rules out any free hydrogen / oxygen hypothesis... or at least renders it less likely.
Now, so, maybe there is some sort of hydrogen compound and some sort of oxygen compound that could react on earth to form water. Well, then, you'd have to ask, where's the traces of those reactions occuring, and, are there any minerals out there today that support those conclusions. Right now, you can find oxygen in just about any good old mineral, but hydrogen, I think that's an entirely different mater. I'm not a geologist, but I'm pretty sure that the only hydrogens we find on earth are from organic compounds, and they get it from a reaction that ultimately originates with water as one of the reagents.
Now, that is of course based on a geological understanding that goes maybe at most a mile or two into the earth's crust. There could be some sort of something in the mantle where, ahah, there is a ton of hydrogen... you know, like water is formed from some hydrogen bearing rock mixing with some oxygen bearing rock inside the earth and shoots up out of a volcano. IF you could somehow find a set of candidate rocks and then make a good case for it, inside the earth, consistent with what we already know from the geological record about how the earth was formed, then yeah, you'd probably refute the underlying assumption of these japanese scientists and be some kind of a hero.
But you'd be a bigger hero than that... because, if you actually could find a non-organic source of hydrogen on the earth you'd be a huge hero, because you would have discovered a fairly green non-fossil fuel. Good luck with that!
This is my sig.
When will people realize that it is okay to be a young earth Creationist and still believe in science. The Darwinists have things mostly right, it's just that God created the Universe 6000 years ago and made it APPEAR to be much older. Time, as we observe it, is directly controlled by God and as such he can manipulate it to be anything He wills.
Water is the most important thing needed for life. The hard part of life isn't explaining how water forms, but how inantimate, dead chemicals can become alive. As far as we know so far, life has never arisen anywhere but here, although despite any lack of proof it's assumed that we are not alone.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
"The book" doesn't actually specify either is the case, but based on this article I'll be taking the "dividing the waters above the sky" part down a notch on my personal allegory/literal spectrum, anyway.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
The Earth's gravity is not nearly strong enough to keep molecular hydrogen trapped. You might get a few water molecules formed that way, but most of any free hydrogen escaped as is.
I think it would be more accurate though to state that MOST water was probably created via the mechanism described in the article. I'm pretty sure there was some fraction of water that was created through other mechanisms.
A better question is when will people realize that the Bible never specifies the date of creation. Only idiots take the story literally.
but the interstellar dustcloud waterchild concept wins hollywood glamor points, while your more reasonable point of view is mundane and humdrum
it is a facet of scientific theory formation known as michael bayification: the more dramatic and trippy the theory, the more likely it is to spread in the popular press, and therefore to gain more traction in the minds of the average joe
"5 billion interstellar dustcloud water" is just so cool sounding man. while your point of view is full of zzz
so c'mon, get with the program, your ideas are just so drab. perhaps if you redescribed your theory as it would appear being mumbled by a secret military organization figurehead in a big budget disaster movie. make believe you are a 23 year old hollywood script writer perusing wikipedia in forming your scientific mumbo jumbo
repeat after me: "hyperplanetary accretion disc catalysis"
or "gravity well coupled reverse electrolysis"
there you go, now we are playing in the big leagues of science-theory-by-public-relations-ad-copy-writer
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The more we learn, the more obvious it becomes that life, far from being a unique or rare thing in the universe, is actually an inevitable natural process, and will consistently and repeatedly erupt under environmental conditions that are actually very common across the universe.
Its not unlikely that life is common, but as far as we can tell is that intelligent life may be very rare or at least it tends to die out before or after some planet ending disaster like meteor impacts, super volcanoes, and cosmic rays.
If we view that natural selection is the ultimate process of determine which species will invariably live or go extinct then the only species that will survive over time is one that becomes intelligent enough or biologically capable enough to avoid, minimize, or just survive such disasters.
Hell for all we know the cockroaches descendants might outlive us due to the fact the might be able to survive meteor impacts and then go on to have a space faring species that travel on rocks colonizing planets over time.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
If life is inevitable then that is actually very scary for the future of the human race. Think about it, everything we have seen of the cosmos seems to indicate we're alone. SETI has heard nothing, astronomers have yet to find a dyson sphere, and most worrying there is no evidence of Von Nueman probes (self replicating probes could colonize every solar system in the galazy in about 100 million years).
There is a Great Filter somewhere before a species reaches interstellar intelligence. If we are lucky, the Filter is behind us; life could be extreamly dificult to start, multicellular organizms on earth may have been a fluke, intelligence a freak occurance. The other option is that the Great Filter is still to be met; nanotechnological disaster, nuclear/biological war, environmental disaster.
I used to think that intelligence was inevitable in a galaxy the size of ours but if it were there would be evidence of them. The distances are incredibly huge but the time-spans are even more so. If humanity survives the next ten thousand years, I believe we will be well on our way to putting a probe in every solar system in the Galaxy. Send out a single probe, when it reaches its destination it builds ten copies of itself and sends them out. It isn't that hard, NASA drew up rough plans for it decades ago and I'm confident the plans will be viable within my lifetime.
If life is inevitable, why aren't there any visitors in our neighborhood? There are many theoretical answers to that question but the only compelling one to me is that we are alone.
Interestingly. 10 kelvin != 10 degrees.
The unit is 'kelvins' not 'degrees kelvin.' A degree means an increment between one extreme to another, which made sense for the Fahrenheit system (100 increments between the likely lowest and highest temperatures generally experienced in the environment the system was made in) and it made sense for the Centigrade system (100 increments between the freezing point and the boiling point of water at standard pressure.)
That's why degrees are also used in angles. 360 increments around a circle.
As the kelvin scale is absolute, referring to them as degrees isn't correct.
"Am I the only person?"
To RTFA?
It would appear so.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
and is one of the seven SI base units.
B-b-b-b-b-but I thought SI was always base-10, that clearly says 7.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
There is somewhere between 100,000 and 2,000,000 times as much water on earth as there is biomass(go ahead and find a better estimate on how much water there is, biomass is close enough to 2,000 billion tons, which is 6.7*10^14 kg).
Given a million years, not very much of that needs to be cycled each year for most of it to have been organic matter at some point, but it would be interesting to see just how much of the water in a plant is newly created(and the percentages of water that a plant destroys and creates in a given year would be cool too).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I always used to think that, except when I looked up the residence time of my local water supply ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cycle - deep ground water) I discovered that there is an 80% chance that I have not been drinking dino-piss after all...
Dredging my memory from a high school class about 30 years ago, photosynthesis utilizes water and recombines the molecules:
CO2 + H2O + sunshine => C6H12O6 + O2
Apologizes for the lack of subscripting; I tried and failed...
No, really. For hundreds of years the scientific notion was that the universe had always existed, and the idea of a "beginning" to the planet--let alone the cosmos--was just religious claptrap.
And if you want to get really specific, the concept that time is a fluid construct of your local frame of reference pre-dates serious scientific discussion as to the begining of the universe.
(Of course, if you're willing to prove me wrong, and can dig up a reference to "god-time" before the Big Bang theory, I'd love to hear it.)
Is that really "new" water, or just water trapped under ground being released?
Oh, it's certainly not all water, but does vulcanism really produce new water from hydrogen and oxygen?
...and it is a 'story'... then would you agree to call 'The Bible' a work of fiction?
While we have theorized that not all of those are needed, the truth is that we haven't found so much as a single primitive cell anywhere else. And we haven't found one single location in the entire universe with all five save for our home planet. You sound like a seasoned explorer of space, who has spent countless years braving the depths of interstellar space, visited hundreds of remote star systems, only to be faced with disappointment time after time.
I really feel for you.
The kind of a claim you're making is even more of a hyperbole than claiming that there are no mexicans working in the kitchens of New York City restaurants, because you haven't seen one in Dubai.
I'm curious - why must he be an atheist if he rejects the idea of a God that would leave people in an apparent state of deception (from GP poster's point of view)?
He could just as easily believe in a different God, or multiple Gods, or etc. which to him/her is truthful in every way.
Or he could be agnostic, saying that there may very well be a God, or multiple gods, but that he doesn't believe that the God described in OP is the kind of God he would choose to believe in.
--
As for the 26 words... I know human beings more benevolent and loving like that. I, for one, don't need the love of a random stranger in order for me to help them in any which way I can if I concern myself with their person. Put differently, from the perspective of somebody who were not to believe in 'God', what would 'God' have done for them that would have him deserve their love? On the up side - those who don't believe in God typically don't believe in Hell and all that, and probably couldn't care less about what God thinks and demands, as it becomes a moot issue.
I thought it was a marathon. All water in the universe is space sweat?
I drank what? -- Socrates
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Without looking into all your points, I am pretty damn sure that things don't happen as you describe.
You have three points here that don't go together:
- The only hydrogen compounds on earth are in organics and water
- Organics got their hydrogen compounds soely through reactions with water
- Free hydrogen escapes into space
If all of these were true, the total amount of water on earth would be constantly decreasing, and would have been for billions of years. This is not the case - the amount of water on earth is relatively constant. As far as I remember from my university chemistry and biology classes, organics don't, for the most part, break down water ever.
Now I don't know the **actual** hydrogen sink for life on earth, but I am pretty sure it isn't water as you describe.
One way to estimate this is to look at the carbon respiration of the planet. It takes 4 or 5 years for the amount of carbon we put into the atmosphere to equal the amplitude of the seasonal variation and the seasonal variation is a rough indicator of the amount of cycling that biomass does. If we assume equal molar quantities of water and carbon dioxide get cycled and note that we put about 7Gt of carbon into the air each year then at least 20Gt of water gets turned into hydrocarbons and turned back into water each year. The mass of the hydrosphere is about 1.4 billion Gt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean#Physical_properties so the biosphere ought to cycle that in about 700 million years. Less than a majority of water molecules are in their original (pre-solar) configuration.
Good thing we've still got 10^22 more stars to check out, eh?
It can't be new. See scientists have already decided this is how all water is formed. RTFA! You can't expect to be taken seriously, can you? Even if you had the credentials, we'd just wait until this becomes accepted fact and ridicule you for not conforming.
Note to self: Stop putting jokes in my insightful comments so I can get something other than +1 Funny!
The bible never states the date of creation, true... but we all know it happened on a Thursday.
When all else fails, use fire.
Oh yes, we haven't found any other life anywhere else. Given that we can only really look closely at a couple dozen worlds (counting some moons) and we have only actually put probes on less than a handfull of them. There couldn't possibly be life anywhere else in our solar system, let alone the rest of our galaxy or the universe.
Clearly this makes life extremely rare and unlikely to be observed elsewhere.
what's that now?
Don't we all just hate it when off-topic trolls drag the discussion into the gutter. I'm glad someone knew how to use their mod-points wisely.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
And where does all that water coming out of car exhaust pipes come from? I would swear it's not 5 billion years old either.
Just because life is inevitable doesn't mean it's happened elsewhere yet.
Cynical Idealist
Because despite the wealth of evidence to the contrary, the creationists have reared their ugly, hatefilled heads again and are trying to tear society back into the dark ages where their brand of amusement was most popular. We have a moron for a president who actually believes "the jury's still out on evolution". Imagine! It's the 21st century and a world leader of an industrialized nation actually believes there's not enough evidence of evolution to make a valid case!
Enough is enough, it's time to take back reality from the delusional. Will posts on slashdot make a difference? No, but with all of the headway the delusional are making these days, it's nice to know there are still sane, rational people out there, too.
I, personally, will not get over it. Too much progress has been made despite christianity's best efforts to hold it back, I refuse to let them regain any ground.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
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One day at a time, my friend. They don't have the full story.
Play Command HQ online
200 billion stars, 6.5 billion years. The size and age of the Milky Way Galaxy. If life is inevitable, do you really think we would be the first?
10K of water ought to be enough for anybody.
Probably. It depends on how much of the hydrosphere is biologically active in a given period. If 95% of the biological activity involves 1% of the water, the cycle time is going to be much much higher.
Note that I am only pointing out that there is a big if, not trying to speculate on what the numbers really are.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
"Water is the most abundant solid material in space. " Hmm, solid water. If only we had some term to describe this stuff.
Unless God-days are different from our days.
I would argue that it can't be a literal day, because the literal day was shorter 6,000 years ago than it is today, if only by 80 milliseconds. The Earth's rotation slows down very slightly every year due to tidal friction.
Furthermore, the 24 hour period is not exactly 24 hours. Depending on where you measure it, and depending on whether you are measuring high noon, or whatever, the actual amount of time only averages to approximately 24 hours, it is not the same exact figure every day.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
It does not specify the date, but it does establish a time interval (6 days = 144 hours). Unless God-days are different from our days.
END QUOTE
The Christian Bible actually does expand upon this a bit... Although, you might say it is also open to interpretation...
"For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past..." - Psalms 90:4
In other words, according to the Bible, 1000 Human Years is equal to 1 God Days. Therefore, using this assumption and rounding the numbers up a little for the sake of convenience, Jesus Christ (who is said to be "The Son of God") has only been gone for approximately 2 God Days (2000 Human Years).
With regards to Genesis and the account of creation... When the Bible says it took God six days to build and construct Earth, the Bible doesn't state which unit of measure we're using here. Are we talking 6 God Days (6000 Human Years) or are we actually talking 6 Human Days?
Now, back to our previously scheduled debate.
Actually god made the universe 6 minuets ago and he just created all our memories to make it seem longer. He also stops and starts the universe routinely but we don't notice because we can't see time.
Does a postfixed "K" represent something different within the scientific community that I simply didn't know about?
Google is your friend.
Uh, yeah, like cause 10K is -441.4 degrees Fahrenheit or -263 degrees Celsius.
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Regardless of the precision of your measurement, what is a day? A book written for human consumption should assume that the units are familiar to them. Otherwise you run the risk of looking like you are trying to rewrite the Bible in order to reconcile the biblical account with the scientific one.
I have given up on trying to reconcile the biblical account of creation with what we currently observe and understand today. You have to get way too creative in your interpretation in order to make it happen, and in doing so, you create a bad precedent for the rest of the book.
A much simpler solution (for me) is to infer that the bible was a document created by Stone-Age men who had no clue how the world came about. They made something up based on someone's vision, dream, or hallucination and used that to establish the social order. Every document in the Bible was written in this fashion and included into the Bible by a committee of men, who decided somehow that it was inspired by a deity. To me, there is way too much confusion and disorder in that book for it to be written by the supreme creator.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
...that is, 10 degrees Celsius above absolute zero.
That's almost as bad. What you meant to say was, "-263.15 degrees Celsius."
The US free market: two halves of a government-granted duopoly are free to set the market price.
Wow, If I ever heard bullshit on Slashdot, this would be it.
You're absolutely right. However, so much of Christianity is built on the literal truth of the Bible, such that if you *can't* take it literally, then *everything* in the bible becomse suspect. People will grasp on to the literal word of the Bible because that's the only way some people can find stability in their faith, by deluding themselves.
If the earth wasn't built in six days, then maybe, just maybe, water wasn't turned into wine, and maybe the promise of everlasting life may not really be a promise after all.
So let's say the earth was made 6000 years ago. Now you have stars that are thousands of light years away that are just now shining their light down on us? If you have a star 20,000 light years away, how do you reconcile that? Holy Shit, God can even create light *in transit* just to shine down on the fake dinosaur bones he buried in the ground 6000 years ago.
Or maybe it's just a bunch of bull.
Good thought. I'd guess that since the time for ocean circulation to bring the oceans vertical temperature distribution back into equilibrium after a instantaneous change in CO2 is a couple of centruries, most hydrogen is available to be evaporated or used by seaweed and plankton on that kind of timescale. A portion could be held as inactive archaic aquifers, but not the majority. Evidence of past inland seas suggests that icesheets do no persist on geological timescale and thus do not hold water all that long.
you know this is /. when a discussion about "How water Forms in Interstellar Space at 10K" turns into a discussion about God, religion, the cosmos etc.
this is why i like this place:)
I'd always assumed that it was formed from ions:
- Oxygen atom collects a lose electron or two to form a negatively-charged oxygen ion.
- Oxygen ion collects a lose proton or hydrogen atom to form a hydroxyl ion (or "atom")
- Hydroxyl ion collects a lose proton, or
- Hydroxyl "atom" collects first an electron then a proton.
No surface necessary: The captures can start out very tenuous (say, due to interactions with additional particles or magnetic fields in a gas cloud) and then conserve momentum by radiating photons and recoiling as the captured particles descend through the energy levels toward a neutral molecule.
But I'm not an astrophysicist, so I have no idea how plausible that water-origin story is.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It does. "The beginning," "the second day," "the third day," "the beginning," etc. It's a rather simplistic calendar, but it is indeed rather specific as well.
The more we learn, the more obvious it becomes that life, far from being a unique or rare thing in the universe, is actually an inevitable natural process, and will consistently and repeatedly erupt under environmental conditions that are actually very common across the universe.
then, uh, where is it? That's the Fermi problem. If life would have erupted under all sorts of conditions in the universe, somebody smart should have evolved besides us by now. After all, the earth is only a 1/3 the age of the universe and theoretically there could be and should be civilizations out there that are literally thousands, millions and billions of years older than our own.
But we have seen -nothing-.
This is my sig.
The universe could be teeming with life and we wouldn't know it - we have such a limited idea of what to look for, and such a limited ability to look.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
When will people realize that it is okay to be a young earth Creationist and still believe in science. The Darwinists have things mostly right, it's just that God created the Universe 6000 years ago and made it APPEAR to be much older. Time, as we observe it, is directly controlled by God and as such he can manipulate it to be anything He wills.
We actually did not exist two seconds ago. Everything you believe in, even the continuity of your life, is a morality play created by God every two seconds. The entire universe, every living thing, is just the luminous beings of heaven arranging thesmelves across the multiverse in a number of beings... the real you, the you that exists for two seconds, might well spend its next as a frog or a bacteria.
This is my sig.
So it would be 10kK, O.K.?
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
In other words, according to the Bible, 1000 Human Years is equal to 1 God Day
That's ridiculous. You are talking about a rhetorical point in Psalms that has absolutely nothing to do with setting up a scale of time in Genesis.
The book of Genesis is a good story with a moral point. The idea wasn't to say how the earth was made, it was to paint a backstory which illustrates that sin and temptation are as old as the earth itself, which is undeniably true.
Do you really think God would go to someone who barely had invented fire, and try and explain the ins and outs of big bang theory? I mean, what would be the point of the human experience if we couldn't discover it for ourselves, and learn for ourselves?
So God -lied-. Get over it. He is God and he can do what He wants.
This is my sig.
You're absolutely right. However, so much of Christianity is built on the literal truth of the Bible, such that if you *can't* take it literally, then *everything* in the bible becomse suspect
Biblical inerracy is not the basis of religion. Christianity, Catholicism in particular, is an oral tradition religion that uses the bible as a common frame of spiritual reference..
The whole deal with the church wasn't so much as to say the bible was the sole truth, as it was to say that the church had the sole role in interpreting the bible. Nobody really had a problem with Galileo, in fact, he enjoyed the support of the Pope, until he started basically casting judgements about the bible itself, and that was a usurpation of the power of the church.
This is my sig.
I agree. Were it not for christianity, we could have stronger, Roman values, and could merely justify the extermination of our enemies because they were weaker.
I know you're joking, but I think what you're describing are Roman CATHOLIC "values". So, you're suggesting that without christianity there would be no values? Please, all one has to do is look at the crimes committed by them over history, and they're not all "ancient", unless you consider Jonestown and the Nazi holocaust "ancient", to know your argument holds no merit.
Look, you have all of these people arguing against the USA military actions around the world, as if, there was some sort of a cosmic judge that holds us wrong. This planet lives at the mercy of the USA and it is high time we make it pay for us.
And with that, you shoot yourself in the foot. The US has always had a reputation as a bunch of pricks, but that reputation has been exacerbated under our current administration that feels it has a moral imperative from his god to recapture the holy land. The other evil, McCain, is proud to be endorsed by a preacher who claims we should make war with Iran and ignite the end of days and bring about the rapture and thus the return of the jayzus.
The sooner we get rid of religion, and focus on survival of the fittest, we can eliminate the silly notions of the soul and with it the idea of fundamental rights. From there, we can proceed with the extermination of the third world, replacing weaker cultures with a stronger industrialized one, keeping the planet for those who have the values to use it, not merely subsistent parasites that besmirch the very name of humanity with their almost termite like existence.
It's funny you only hear religious types reaching for Spencer's "theory". No, Darwin used it as a metaphor for natural selection, it was Herbert Spencer who turned it into the kind of argument you're trying to turn it into (eugenics). Of course, I can understand why you'd go there. After all, religion breeds evil people. I think it has to do with the fact that your "values" are based on murder, rape, infanticide and genocide.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
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Ah yes, Kelvin. The standard unit of desktop temperature, as defined by KDE.
Yes, it's not like the christians would EVER do something like that...oh, wait, weren't they ordered repeatedly to level cities, kill the men, rip the babies from the bellies of the women, and keep the virgins as slaves? Oh, that's right, we gloss over that and pretend the jesus "changed" all of that...despite the fact that he clearly advocates child abuse and murder according to "his father's" previous orders. Ooops...
Sorry, you're just a slave to christian propaganda.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
0830 HRS Parent -1 off-topic?
1330 HRS Parent +5 funny?
In a couple hundred years, when we are living on a global set for some Tatooine sit-com I don't think it will be as funny. +1 insightful, perhaps.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Similarly, I highly doubt my car keys exist because I've patted down my coat and both pockets have tested negative.
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
Interesting point, but I was under the impression that the vast majority of molecular hydrogen coaleseced into the Sun, and the remaining fraction around the major gas giants. I am not so sure there was even enough hydrogen around on the newly formed Earth to be worth noting.
As you said, we don't know what happened back then, but it makes for some interesting thought experiments.
We have quite a few assumptions in these sentences. It almost sounds like the humans are telling Nature what *must* have happened because the humans really are out of ideas. In order to uphold our elitist attitude that we can explain everything (even it requires a chain of assumptions and no real proof) we are saying what must have happened because if we can't think of any other explanation then the explanation we have must be correct. This will be a story when they have more than basic assumptions and demands upon Nature that imply we know what happened 5 billion years ago even though we weren't there. The fact they created water using a particular method in no way implies or dictates that some (let alone all) the water outside the lab formed the exact same way.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
A million civilizations could have risen and turned to dust, bombarding the galaxy with radio and television signals and it is very likely we would have missed the tiny flash they made.
In times of trouble, the smell of frying onions usually gives confidence and comfort.
So, going off of these tongue-in-cheek "waterchild" theories in the comments above -- perhaps Thales wasn't so crazy after all positing the origins of the universe as water-based?
I knew I'd get to throw out my (admittedly limited) Presocratic knowledge at some point!
You need to keep in mind the context. Check the post three up that started this:
The more we learn, the more obvious it becomes that life, far from being a unique or rare thing in the universe, is actually an inevitable natural process, and will consistently and repeatedly erupt under environmental conditions that are actually very common across the universe.The poster you are criticizing has merely pointed out that based on the little we currently know, this thesis is unsupported.
Sorry. Was typing too fast and went phonetic. (Yeah, it bugs me, too, when somebody else does it. B-) )
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Well, he could be Wowbagger, the Infinitely Prolonged? He could just be visiting all those planets to insult every living being in the universe - in alphabetical order.
Or from the wikipedia article on the Fermi Paradox. There's nothing wrong with repeating and expanding on other people's ideas in your own words.
Exactly. I mean the first paragraph about countries owing it to the USA raised an eyebrow, but when he got to the stuff about the third world, the right to use the earth and termites i took a quick look to see if anyone else modded it funny. Sadly, no.But then again when it comes to religion everyone prefers to take it seriously, god (pun intended) forbid to make fun of someone religious beliefs...
Curiously yours, crip.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
I'll take that wager. With something on the order of one atom of hydrogen per cubic centimeter of interstellar space (http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2000/DaWeiCai.shtml), or even two to four atoms per cubic meter of space (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_space), I think interstellar atomic hydrogen just in the Milky Way will be multiple orders of magnitude greater than all hydrogen on earth, including the hydrogen bound in molecules of water, etc. If you care to quantify the number of said molecules on earth, I'll compute the amount of space needed to equal that.
LOL! Only a christian would go there. No, I'm not gay, I'm just educated and intelligent. I also don't believe in Zeus, Thor, Saturn (the god, not the planet), Freya, Mithra, etc...does that make me gay, too? BTW, which of the thousands of variations of christianity do you follow? Are you one of the ones who molest female children or male children?
Oh, and one more thing...I realize you're a christian and therefore a bit ignorant, but it's spelled faggot, not faggit. If you're going to be an insulting redneck at least try to get it right.
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No, I'm not gay, I'm just educated and intelligent.
Yeah, but you are still a bigot, and, you aren't even intelligent enough to see that atheism is another religion too. Woopy.
I also don't believe in Zeus, Thor, Saturn (the god, not the planet), Freya, Mithra, etc...does that make me gay, too?
Actually, well, probably.
Are you one of the ones who molest female children or male children?
No. Actually, I'm the kind that favors the death penalty for all child molestors and rapists. Are you the kind of educated man that wants to set them free, or convinces me that I should pay taxes to keep these people alive? Or are you the kind of educated man that argues that poor Tookie Williams was misunderstood, the kind of reasonable man that pretends that drug dealers are just another sort of business men, the sort of reasonable, educated man that wants to save a few elk in the frozen wastelands of Alaska while meanwhile millions of people in the USA struggle to eat and get to work so that your fraudulent conscience may be appeased.
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LOL! Only a christian would go there
Actually, no. That's a reasonable guess because being gay is really the only thing that gets you frowned in on many christian sects.
You can't say that christians are racist, when in fact, there are christian churches of white, black, hispanic and even asian persuasion. You can't say that christians are all slavers, when, in fact, it was devoted christians that worked to end slavery. You can't say that christians are all socialists, or all capitalists, when christians are in both camps, and you can't say that christians are warmongers, when you have the current pope and many religious leaders routinely calling for an end to all wars. So, the only reason you could really justify hating about two billion people on the planet, would be if in fact, you were gay, in which case, many christians probably would view your acts as something of a moral choice.
So, if you aren't gay, then, there's really no reason to be so hateful, and given that, is it really so intelligent to waste so much energy hating? Were you molested, or, was something you made up to explain why you might be a molester yourself. Do you use your hatred of christianity to absolve yourself of your own crimes? Like, when you cheat on your partners, do you tell yourself, Christians are worse, so therefor, you are ok? How many times have you hit your children or beat your wife? I'll bet they are black and blue. At least you save money at Christmas. You don't have to get kids anything. You just say, "well, I'm not participating in this crazy religious holiday". That's good for you! For sure!
Rock on dude.
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Why do you blindly assume that intelligence is a characteristic that increases the survival chances of a species?
I don't see any proof of that.
As a matter of fact, I can see lots of evidence to support the theory that too much intelligence reduces the survival chances for a species.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
On the other hand, the reasons for separate Hispanic, Chinese, and Korean Protestant churches in the US are primarily language. Catholic churches didn't traditionally have this problem as much, because if everything's in Latin then only the people who've learned their Latin really understand the show (though the Italians and Spanish can catch some of it anyway.) But for the rest of us, and for Catholic churches after Vatican II, it's really nice to understand what the preacher is saying, especially on complex philosophical or emotional issues, and to be able to talk to each other the rest of the time, and the alternatives are to either hang out in separate groups or to share the world's most common language, which is Bad English.
Haitians in the Northeast US are an edge case - they've usually had separate churches because they're speaking Creole French, but of course the reasons they're black are because of slavery.
I used to go to a Southern Baptist church in New Jersey, and it was really annoying to hear some people refer to it as a "white" church - we were about 1/3 Chinese, a few black families, a few Colombians, a few Puerto Ricans, an Arab family, some southerners, some Yankees, some Vietnamese (well, technically they were Chinese from Saigon, but they spoke Hakka). Not bad for under 100 people. Eventually a Chinese-language church opened up nearby and most of the Chinese families started going to it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Actually, no. That's a reasonable guess because being gay is really the only thing that gets you frowned in on many christian sects.
Which is funny since being gay is like being black; it's how you're born, you can't change it. So, the christians hate a whole class of people who are "just as god made 'em". How nice of them.
You can't say that christians are racist, when in fact, there are christian churches of white, black, hispanic and even asian persuasion.
Sure I can. Watch: christians are racist. See? I notice you excluded middle eastern persuasions in there. I also notice you segregated the churches up nicely by skin color, too. Oh, sure, the occasional black family'll go to a white church, but they have to sit next to the gays so they can pretend the others frowing at the fags and not them.
You can't say that christians are all slavers, when, in fact, it was devoted christians that worked to end slavery.
Sure I can, it's in the "good book" that it's ok, and in some cases even required, to own slaves. That's how the overwhelming majority of christians worked so hard to keep hold of slavery. If I can't hold the majority responsible for the sins of the minority, you can't absolve the majority for the good acts of a minority.
You can't say that christians are all socialists, or all capitalists, when christians are in both camps, and you can't say that christians are warmongers, when you have the current pope and many religious leaders routinely calling for an end to all wars.
Would that be the Hitler Youth pope? Hitler, after all, was a christian.
So, the only reason you could really justify hating about two billion people on the planet, would be if in fact, you were gay, in which case, many christians probably would view your acts as something of a moral choice.
I never said I hated christians, I said they were delusional. I pity them, just as I pity anyone else who suffers from mental illness. I said they were responsible for quite a lot of misery in the world, I never said hate. I said they were responsible for holding back progress by setting fire to anything or anyone who disagreed with the word of the lord, but not hate. That's just your training taking over that makes you see hate everywhere because, well, you're responsible for so much of it.
skipping the stupidity about hate....Like, when you cheat on your partners, do you tell yourself, Christians are worse, so therefor, you are ok? How many times have you hit your children or beat your wife? I'll bet they are black and blue. At least you save money at Christmas. You don't have to get kids anything. You just say, "well, I'm not participating in this crazy religious holiday". That's good for you! For sure!
Why wouldn't I celebrate xmas? It's not a christian holiday. Oh, it was preempted by them, but it's not theirs. Xmas is a pagan holiday and every time you put up a tree or exchange gifts you're honoring the traditions of another god. Do you go to confession for violating the FIRST commandment? Do you even know all 10? It's okay if you don't, I haven't met many christians who do. As for the other stuff...no, I don't beat my wife or kids, I told you, I'M NOT CHRISTIAN.
Yeah, but you are still a bigot, and, you aren't even intelligent enough to see that atheism is another religion too. Woopy.
It is? Really? How do you figure? Oh, right...I have to have "faith" that there are no gods, right? Yeah, because all of the evidence to the contrary really requires a whole lot of "faith". To reuse an old quote: "Calling atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair color."
No. Actually, I'm the kind that favors the death penalty for all child molestors and rapists. Are you the kind of educated man that wants to set them free, or convinces me that I should pay taxes to keep these people alive?
Hey, don't blame me for that crap, the overwhelming majority of people in prison are christian, w
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Space is really big and empty, and vaguely potentially habitable places to live are really rare and far apart - and starships that you can build in your backyard, or possibly even in your planet's backyard, are from the fiction side of science fiction, not the science side.
Even if there _are_ other intelligent beings out there, it's pretty unlikely that they'd be able to afford to burn the kind of resources it would take to do much starfaring. Even communications is really hard - if a species spends a million years broadcasting into space using frequencies and patterns we'd recognize as communications, that doesn't get you much coverage, and maybe they last probed our direction a century ago so we've missed our chance for the millenium, or maybe we just didn't recognize the signal they sent us last Tuesday because SETI wasn't pointed in the right direction.
Or, well, they figured that we're made out of meat, and didn't want to keep talking to us.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
... oh, never mind, everybody pretty much figured that one was coming anyway.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Your snarky response makes little sense. If not for Christianity, the only single possible alternative source of morals would be the Romans? What about Hinduism, Buddhism, humanism, or even economic theory.
Further, the Bible only real presents two (diametrically opposed) approaches to international politics. 1) Commit genocide against anyone who gets in your way (for reference see the old testament). 2) Ignore politics (for reference see Jesus' quote "give to Caesar what is Caesar's"). I guess the third option is having your nation overrun and all your people enslaved. So which of those options is the US currently employing? If none, which of them should the US employ?
Maybe you're just trying to be funny. Or maybe you really didn't understand the post.
The parent was responding to someone who made the completely baseless claim that life is known to spring up all over the universe. Apparently in large part because the conditions necessary for it to spring up are present all over the universe.
Now - instead of being all smarmy... point me to a reference that shows that we've discovered life anywhere outside of our solar system.
Then, for good measure, explain what these conditions are that are conducive to life... and I only ask that because, when it comes down to it, we don't actually really know. We have guesses, but that's it.
So, basically - your analogy sucked. It's the rough equivalent of saying "I know for a fact that my car keys exist on planets throughout the universe, because I also know for a fact that the conditions for my car keys to exist are present in a lot of places. Even though I, in fact, only have this one set of car keys."
I suspect that's not what you really intended. But it's what came across to anyone who had followed the thread. Or at least I would hope that would be apparent to anyone reading the thread.
never said I hated christians, I said they were delusional. I pity them, just as I pity anyone else who suffers from mental illness
Dude, you couldn't pity your own mother, if she died in front of you.
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That's how the overwhelming majority of christians worked so hard to keep hold of slavery.
Um,that's certainly not factually accurate. The British Empire banned the slave trade, and then, the Northern Army ended it in the USA. The South lost, you see, partially because the North had more people.
But of course, prior to Christianity, slavery was common practice. Your beloved Roman Empire, for example, existed on the backs of slaves.
It is? Really? How do you figure?
Pretty simple. A religion is merely a common group of people with a polarizing belief code of some sort. Atheists fall into that category for sure. Look at you now. You condemn with an assortment of falsehoods and pseudo-facts that are largely born of your own lifetime spent gobbling down your own barfy propaganda.
That's just your training taking over that makes you see hate everywhere because, well, you're responsible for so much of it.
No, it's common sense. You have a lot of violent opinions against christians. You condemn the whole group. You are like, the NAZI that says, "well, I don't hate black people, but I just want them to go away".
Which is funny since being gay is like being black; it's how you're born, you can't change it.
There's not a single shred of scientific evidence for that, though, that's the problem. In fact, the whole problem with your belief system is that you have no way of legitimately arguing that people are innately equal. By what yardstick do you do that? Past historical accomplishment - there's inequality there. Current economic or political accomplishment - there's inequality there. Really, without some sort of viewing humanity in terms of some faith, there's no legitimate way to ascribe the very equality that you feel is violated. How do you say that different cultures are "equal", and worthy of "equal" respect, when scientifically speaking, they are not.
Would that be the Hitler Youth pope? Hitler, after all, was a christian.
So was Isaac Newton, Queen Elizabeth, Francis Bacon, James Watt, Gregor Mendel, Maxwell, Clerk, Edison, Bell, Ford, Rockefeller, Hollerith, Gates, DeForest, Roosevelt, Lincoln, King... seems like Christians have done an aweful lot. What have atheists done? Not much. I guess that makes you all a bunch of stinking losers.
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Which is funny since being gay is like being black; it's how you're born, you can't change it. So, the christians hate a whole class of people who are "just as god made 'em". How nice of them.
There's no proof of that, whatsover. A man can choose to engage in various behaviors, but he can't choose the color of his skin.
Sure I can, it's in the "good book" that it's ok, and in some cases even required, to own slaves. That's how the overwhelming majority of christians worked so hard to keep hold of slavery.
The majority of christians worked to own slavery. The historical facts are thus: slavery was common, particularly with Romans, and slavery fell out of favor as christianity took hold. By the time it died in the USA, only a minority of people were in favor of it, and ultimately, they lost the civil war.
But, to answer your question: no, I'm not in favor of the death penalty for child molestors. These people are sick and need help, not incarceration or execution.
They need to die. There's no proven therapy that rehabilitates them. Let's see how you feel after your wife gets raped.
Would that be the Hitler Youth pope? Hitler, after all, was a christian.
So was Newton, Kant, Watt, Maxwell, Clerk, DaVinci... even Galileo was a Christian, and then you have Wilson, both Roosevelts, Kennedy, Reagan, Martin Luther King Jr, even Barrack Obama says he is a Christian. Fancy that.
The people of the US are struggling to get to work and feed their families because your christian president is so hell-bent on bombing freedom into those non-christians that he's exhausting us financially. With the money we've spent on his holy war in the last year alone we could've easily come up with efficient alternative energys that would've alleviated their suffering (and not cause a food shortage like ethanol), but instead we just send wave after wave of them to die needlessly, all in the name of the jesus
Oh brother. The price of fuel is high because liberals like you have prevented drilling and refining in the USA. There's 2 trillion dollars worth of oil in Alaska alone, and trillions more sitting off the coasts, and that money could have been used to fund even your stupid socialist objectives. But oh no, you would RATHER choose to save a couple of Polar Bears and fish to feel good about yourselves then you would save your own countrymen.
Hey, Christianity has its faults, but at least we value humans more than animals. Every time you insist on enslaving people to the high price of imported energy and goods because you've outlawed all industry to save a few bears and a few frogs, you show where your true colors are. I won't even get into discussing how many millions have people have died at the hands of your atheist liberal policies because you banned all pesticides effective against the malaria mosquito. Send them nets. What a joke. You want all of those people to die too.
At the end of the day, no amount of finger pointing against a few bad christians will excuse you from your obvious and violent assault on humanity. Every time someone pays $3.50 a gallon in gasoline, or more, you've proved just how evil you really are.
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It's over nine thousaaaaaaaaaand!
*coat*
There's no proof of that, whatsover. A man can choose to engage in various behaviors, but he can't choose the color of his skin.
There's no proof of your stance whatsoever, either. Unlike the christians, I choose to err on the side of reality. Homosexual behavior is common enough in nature among other animals that it's just stupid hubris to believe it's not natural for us just because some shephards sitting around 4000 years ago decided it wasn't.
The majority of christians worked to own slavery. The historical facts are thus: slavery was common, particularly with Romans, and slavery fell out of favor as christianity took hold. By the time it died in the USA, only a minority of people were in favor of it, and ultimately, they lost the civil war.
Slavery was around long before the Romans. The primary differences between Roman slaves and christian slaves is that the Roman slaves could not only earn their freedom, but were typically not beaten or subjected to extremely hard labor. Read a history book sometimes. Sure, there were exceptions, just like there were exceptions with christians treating their slaves well.
They need to die. There's no proven therapy that rehabilitates them. Let's see how you feel after your wife gets raped.
Typical christian, failing to turn the other cheek. Jesus said child molestation was ok, why are you so against it? Your priests aren't. They love them little boys. (Curious: why is THAT homosexuality allowed and encouraged?)
So was Newton, Kant, Watt, Maxwell, Clerk, DaVinci... even Galileo was a Christian, and then you have Wilson, both Roosevelts, Kennedy, Reagan, Martin Luther King Jr, even Barrack Obama says he is a Christian. Fancy that.
Yes, and they also spoke their native tongues. Know why? That's what they were born into. Religions, despite their belief, are not hereditary. If your parents were religious (as most people were back then), chances are you will be, too. Well, that and the christians have a great method of dealing with those who aren't: set 'em on fire! If any of them were atheist and THEN became christian, you'd have an argument, but you don't. Indoctrination is always begun at an early age to maximize its potency. See how well it worked on you?
Oh brother. The price of fuel is high because liberals like you have prevented drilling and refining in the USA. There's 2 trillion dollars worth of oil in Alaska alone, and trillions more sitting off the coasts, and that money could have been used to fund even your stupid socialist objectives. But oh no, you would RATHER choose to save a couple of Polar Bears and fish to feel good about yourselves then you would save your own countrymen.
And yet, the estimates by those in the know put the amount of oil at much lower than that. If I thought for half a second it would make a difference, I'd be all for opening up those zones, but there isn't enough oil out there and it's only a stop-gap anyway. Me, I'm more concerned PEOPLE aren't being killed needlessly in your jihad against islam and if I thought it could happen, I'd work towards inventing a device that allowed cars to run on polar bears. But, it's not. Only idiots think the "solution" is to just keep drilling for more oil. Forgetting the fact that if we opened it up today, it would be 2020 before it would be fully geared up and ready to go, it's a stop-gap trumpeted by the religious right to convince their already delusional followers that it's the "evil" liberals who are more interested in making sure YOUR kid has health care than your ability to drive alone to and from work in your Hummer. They're stupid enough to believe a magic zombie jew can make them live forever by participating in cannabolism, why wouldn't they believe MORE drilling will "fix" all of their problems? All the while, they continue to rake in record profits and laugh at you all the way to the church where they pretend they believe what you do.
Hey, Chr
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Unlike the christians, I choose to err on the side of reality.
Oh, now that's a laugh. There's no reality to what you believe in at all.
Slavery was around long before the Romans. The primary differences between Roman slaves and christian slaves is that the Roman slaves could not only earn their freedom, but were typically not beaten or subjected to extremely hard labor. Read a history book sometimes.
I have, and you haven't. Obviously. The life of a Roman slave sucked. The whole notion of a Roman slave "earning his freedom" was as much of a technicality of a slave earning his freedom in the antebellum south. It just didn't happen.
Yes, and they also spoke their native tongues.
Ah, so now you change your story. You indicted christians, I gave you positive examples, and yet, you got nothing. You still haven't answered the question, what have atheists accomplished. My answer stands : nothing. You and your kind are a bunch of stinking losers.
And yet, the estimates by those in the know put the amount of oil at much lower than that.
No, its not, not at all. If not, the amount of recoverable oil is increasing because of the advent of horizontal drilling.
If I thought for half a second it would make a difference, I'd be all for opening up those zones, but there isn't enough oil out there and it's only a stop-gap anyway.
It's trillions of dollars of stop gap. That's the thing. It's trillions of dollars. The country needs the money.
Forgetting the fact that if we opened it up today, it would be 2020 before it would be fully geared up and ready to go,
It doesn't matter. You could do what Gov Corzine proposes to do with the NJ turnpikes, which is, you build a financial security against the assett, so the gov't could get its money now. So basically the Feds create a national oil company and say, ahah, we're drilling ANWR and off the coast of california and a bunch of other places. We have proved reserves of about 10 trillion dollars. So, they IPO the thing, in the form of shares, and investors in that instrument would be entitled to a share of the oil sales profits as the assets are pumped in the future. Since we both know the price of oil is going to rise, the security would have value. You take that money, and buy a bunch of nuclear power plants.
that it's the "evil" liberals who are more interested in making sure YOUR kid has health care than your ability to drive alone to and from work in your Hummer
I, like most Christians, feel health care is important enough to make sure my kid has health care by educating myself, keeping up in tech skills, and staying employable at a high rate.
I also take the train to work.
why wouldn't they believe MORE drilling will "fix" all of their problems? All the while, they continue to rake in record profits and laugh at you all the way to the church where they pretend they believe what you do.
It's probably because you've lost your sense of economic fairness. Clearly, if you are so concerned about profits and racketeering and inequalities in christian institutions, perhaps we should look in liberal institutions as well. After all liberals have a monopoly on the national educational system. What do we find?
Rising tuitions!
Unlike gasoline, tuitions have been rising continually for decades, all so greedy liberals can keep screwing America's children with a shoddy education on the taxpayer's dime.
I say we tax all excess college tuition over $5,000 a year per student. If University of Delaware can get by on 5k a year per pupil, then so can MIT and Harvard and Yale. While we are at it, why don't we lift copyright protection and patents on all research papers and technologies financed in part with US taxpayer dollars.
Oh, and look at Liberals in the arts. Look at all that money... Let's legalize copying of movies and music. Why does Bruce Springsteen deserve millions of dollars
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If I thought for half a second
That would be a lot for you. Don't strain yourself. It's the least this friendly christian could advise you.
See how well it worked on you?
Oh, I thought that it was more like, if you look at which side is most likely to win, I would think that you'd have to with the culture that wins, hands down. Christians win. That's the thing. You couple a nuclear family with lots of kids, a largely peaceful stance coupled with the occasional holy war, and the next thing you know, you have a -dominant- cultural force that not only influences human culture but human evolution just by sheer weight of numbers.
By contrast, what does your godless liberal atheism offer? A chance to be in a minority that can't even breed enough to sustain itself? An offer to be on the side that choose pigs over people? Atheism doesn't exist, pagan religions all failed, because they were not as successful as the mix that is Christianity.
There's not even a threat to Christianity from atheism.... the numbers are so different. There's what, 2 billion christians of some kind, versus an ever miniscule number of atheists? I mean, come on liberalism is screwed up from the get go because you lower your birth rate by supporting abortion... and that's really funny in a tragic way because here you people prattle on about Darwin, yet, you ignore everything he teaches about how to make a successful culture and a dominant species.
And now, having done that, you propose to top it all off with a sort of environmental foolishness that diminishes the wealth of people. What's that going to do? You go ahead and tell people that they have to be poorer to save mother earth for your view. We'll tell people that God loves them and forgives them, and that they should do with the earth what they will, and then the heavens beyond it, when we can reach them. You tell the people that all they have is dust on death, and we'll tell the people the truth about an afterlife if we triumph in God's name. You can insult it, degrade it, and call it what you will, but you cannot deny that when it comes the fundamental values of Christian civilization, not only is God on our side, but Darwin is too.
See on the flipside, oh passenger pidgeon!
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We actually did not exist two seconds ago. Everything you believe in, even the continuity of your life, is a morality play created by God every two seconds.
We don't exist yet. All this isn't really happening. Three minutes from now we will spring into existence with false memories of not only our entire lives from birth, but also of the next three minutes.