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NASA's Kepler Discovers 11 Systems Hosting 26 Planets
An anonymous reader writes "NASA's Kepler mission has discovered 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 confirmed planets. These discoveries nearly double the number of verified planets and triple the number of stars known to have more than one planet that transits, or passes in front of, the star. Such systems will help astronomers better understand how planets form."
Christianity and belief in life outside of Earth are not mutually exclusive.
http://setilive.org/ focuses on Kepler planets, and it's much more interactive than the old SETI@home
The 99% of you that are backward give the rest of you a bad name.
If your thinking cap is not broken, run this by it:
God is benevolent, all knowing, doesn't make mistakes, and so on. Humans are evil, largely stupid, screw everything up, and so on. Therefore, it makes perfect sense to put one's faith in God, and no sense at all to put one's faith in other men.
HOWEVER....
How do you actually go about putting your faith in God, without putting your faith in other men? If your pastor tells you what God wants you to do, and you believe him, then you are actually putting your faith in your pastor, not God. Maybe when God comes down from the sky and tells you what he wants you to do, maybe THEN you can really put your faith in God. But so long as you are hearing it from another human (be it a pastor, or a mystic nut, or a book written by either), then you are actually just putting your faith in men.
It turns out that all of Christianity is built on faith in other men. The Bible is a book, written printed and distributed by humans. The notion of "divine inspiration" is perpetuated by men. Did God tell you, himself, that He inspired the Bible, or did some other human tell you? Did God tell you, himself, that Jesus was his son, or did another human tell you?
Use your thinking cap and you will see: all religious teachings come from humans. And humans, as we already established, are unworthy of faith.
If you really want to put your faith in God, you are going to have to make a leap. You will have to reject every human idea about God. Every one. All that is left is the simple living of your life to the best of your ability...figuring things out as you go along...like the rest of us do. It is really scary living without absolute moral justification for your actions, or the comfort of knowing that you are doing exactly what God wants you to do. But the fact is...you have always lived this way, you have just been deluded (by other men) into falsely believing otherwise.
How may angels can you fit on the head of a pin?
That one's easy. As many as want to be fitted on the head of a pin. Even the atheists agree.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
The Kepler mission makes this very interesting scientific find and the only thing you people can do is trash Christians? That is your response to FINDING 11 PLANETARY SYSTEMS IN OUR GALAXY, that Christians are lolstupid?
54 candidates in habitable zone, at least five roughly earth-sized (but note even gas giant in habitable zone is significant because it might have habitable moon)
http://kepler.nasa.gov/news/nasakeplernews/index.cfm?FuseAction=ShowNews&NewsID=98
this is one of the reasons slashdot doesn't garner the traffic it used to. People don't care if you're pissed off at christians, in fact they find the incessant complaining quite obnoxious.
I have to agree with what you've said, but it's not just bagging Christians that is the problem.
Often in Slashdot there are people knowledgeable about certain branches of science. They can often provide insight that hits the sweet spot between the pop-science ad-filled blog that stories link to and the original uninterpretable specialist and dry journal article. That's what I come here for.
Generally, the first 40 comments are people trying to make obvious jokes or trolling, followed by 20 or so dickheads like you and me complaining about the jokes. Fortunately reading the story late in the piece gets the few interesting comments up-rated - which is why I keep coming back.
Anyway, speaking of Christians and exoplanets: Giordano Bruno, one of the first people recorded as speculating that other stars might have planets, was executed by The Catholic Church in 1600.
You put on your thinking cap, and yet believe, literally, myths written thousands of years ago? Flimsy cap, that.
-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain