There is a big jump in amygdala activity when the dinosaur crushes the caveman, as shown below. The scene looks funny and has been described as funny by lots of people, but your amygdala still perceives it as threatening, another example of disconnect between verbal reports on ads and brain activity while viewing the ads.
I had a big jump in brain activity when I saw that, but it's because I was thinking, "Dinosaurs and humans lived millions of years apart, you idiots. >:("
I don't think its at all unreasonable to stop a burglar from intruding into your home, and I don't think its unreasonable to stop a terrorist from killing thousands of civilians.
You're missing the point. Everyone will agree with you that it's not unreasonable to stop terrorists. The argument is that it IS unreasonable to circumvent all the rules and laws that we say we honor and cherish to do so.
I would submit to you that in every single war the US has ever engaged in, civil liberties were curtailed far more dramatically than in our current conflict. Abraham Lincoln suspended congress and was for a short time the only 'dictator' the US ever had. FDR curtailed liberties for far, far more people than will ever be passing through Guantanamo.
First, I don't care who's done it in the past. It's still not right. Second, just because the administration says we're in a "War on Terror" doesn't make it a "real" war. The War on Terror is no more a war than the War of Drugs, or the War on Poverty. Third, even if it was a real war, can you tell me when will it be over?
We're spying on OTHER peoples populaces, and should they happen to call someone inside our borders, well so be it.
Um. If the person in the other country calls someone in the US, and the government listens in, then the government IS spying on a member of its own populace.
I agree that many people are probably motivated by 'fear of terrists'. I'm not.
Then how do you rationalize playing fast and loose with the law in order to try to find the terrists?
And science doesn't hit an "infinite regress"? What caused the Big Bang?
Possibly the collision of branes in higher-dimensional space. But since our concept of time begins with the Big Bang, in a sense the Big Bang had no cause. Additionally, once you get to the realm of quamtum mechanics, there are uncaused events happening all the time, everywhere. The Big Bang might just have been a more energetic version.
Science's dirty little secret is that they have no idea where anything came from.
The Wire taps are ONLY on International phone calls, If tapping someone's phone who is calling Pakistan, is going to make me safer, DO IT. If they are innocent, then they have nothing to worry about.
This is how freedom dies. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
I'm sure you won't mind if I personally listen in on all your conversations to make sure you're not a terrorist. If you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about, right?
Are we really concerned that a government screener is going to learn about our toilet habits by listening to a phone call then use that information to embarrass us?
No, we're concerned that the government sees clear to ignore laws that it feels are inconvenient.
Remember this is ONLY international phone calls.
I don't care if whoever it is is calling Osama bin Laden directly on his Friends and Family line. They need to get a goddamned warrant, or stop pretending that this is a nation of laws.
Error number 1. Life clearly had to come from non-life at some point, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Even if God Did It (tm), life still came from non-life.
2) explosions don't bring order
Error number 2. Nothing to do with evolution at all.
3) Mutations occur but almost always bring harm and NEVER add new information to a genetic chain. New information is required for one species to change or evolve into another and this does not occur in observable nature anywhere.
Errors 3 and 4. Mutations can and do add new information, but even if it didn't, that's OK because new information is not required for speciation. Also, speciation has been observed.
4) Science itself was vastly vived by a creationist perspective. The creation around us suggests a Creator that is why it is called creation.
Error 5. Meaningless statement.
Evolutionists can't take the heat which is why they get so angry at opposing views.
No, they get mad when people attempt to trumpet their religious beliefs as a valid scientific theory. Well, they're not.
Step back folks and think for yourselves, study both sides
And going to SA finds a webpage which is devoid of much more than a request for donations... real useful.
You do realize of course that the reason for the stripped-down page is that site is hosted in New Orleans. Now, can you think of any event recently that might have caused them to go offline?
Macro evolution, on the other hand, attempts to explain hot how things change, but how they DID change in the PAST.
Er, what? That's not what people usually mean when they talk about macroevolution. Usually they are talking about things like speciation. And since we've observed speciation to happen, we've seen macroevolution. The whole argument is kind of silly since "macro" and "micro" evolution are artificial terms. Macroevolution is just microevolution plus time.
and all this happened without leaving billions of transitional fossils behind as evidence.
A) We have lots and lots of transitional fossils. B) Fossilization is a very rare event. And C) the fossil record is the weakest evidence for evolution. If we had no fossils at all, evolution would still have massive support.
Except that we've seen evolution happen. We know it happens. All they are arguing about are the details, not whather it occurs. Not "believing" in evolution is equivalent to not "believing" that things fall when you drop them.
Unfortunately, most scientists today view evolution as infalsible.
A scientist today who stumbles upon a discovery that, among other things, disproves the theory of relativity
Baloney. Any scientist who stumbled upon such a discovery would be absolutely guaranteed to win the Nobel Prize and probably get as much funding as the wanted.
I'm simply saying that it's folly for the scientific community to not even consider alternatives
You seem to think that no one has ever tested Einstein's ideas. Well, people have, and they've passed. So far. If someone comes up with another theory, it must explain everything as well as Einstein did, better in fact, and it must be testable.
You can go onto Usenet and find a dozen crackpots who claim to have overturned Relativity. They all tend to fail because the crackpot hasn't understood some basic principle, or don't know that there's already been experiments which rule out their ideas.
Wow, that's awful. When you burn something, no matter is converted to energy.
Wrong. Here's a quote from Cecil Adams on the subject:
Don't bandy words with me, you slime. Despite what many of the Teeming Millions apparently believe, E=mc^2 applies to all reactions, not just nuclear ones. Permit me to quote from Space and Time in Special Relativity by N. David Mermin, a book I read myself to sleep with every night: "A loss of mass occurs whenever internal energy (nuclear, electrical, chemical, etc.) is converted into energy of motion. Only in the nuclear case is the amount of energy so large that [it results] in an observable change in mass, but in principle E=mc^2 is as descriptive of a chemical explosive, a gasoline engine, or a flying bird [or, I might add, a flying human] as it is of a nuclear explosion." Case closed.
You're explaining the symtoms but not the cause. *Why* do you have huge cities. *Why* do people drive miles to work.
Because while people want to work in the city (or have to), or have it available for theater/nightlife/whatever, no one actually wants to live there because on the whole, they are dirty, smelly, grim, crime-ridden hellholes.
Concerning the price of oil/gas, do you think that if prices keep rising like they are (+$0.15 this past weekend alone), do you think we'll even be able to afford space travel in the future? It used to be that the hardware was the expensive part. Imagine if the cost of fuel eventually rises above the cost of the shuttles themselves.
The following dis-proofs of your absolute conjecture are all that I can remember off-hand, but are sufficient (oh, and notice that 'gravity' is a Law, not a Theory:-P )
A "Law" is just a mathematical formula to describe how something appears to work. While there is a "law of gravity", it doesn't really explain the mechanism behind gravity. For that you need a theory of gravity, such as the General Theory of Relativity.
A theory is the top of the heap, as far as things go in science. Theories and laws are two entirely different things; a theory doesn't get promoted into a law later on.
Sorry, Hitler believed he was doing God's work. Really.
Vladimir Stalin
Joseph, surely.
My point is this: the worst massacres seem to stem from athiestic leaders, not religious leaders.
What about the Crusades? The Spanish Inquisition? The witch hunts which went on for centuries?
I think smart athiests in general risk falling into that group. They tend to conclude that morality is a nice and useful convention, but nothing more. I.e., there's no reason to follow it beyond the utilitarian benefits of everyone acting morally.
Pretty much, yeah.
So when a smart athiest concludes that acting morally isn't in his best interests, nothing restrains him from acting according to his self-serving desires.
Except for the consequences from the people who don't agree with him.
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I had a big jump in brain activity when I saw that, but it's because I was thinking, "Dinosaurs and humans lived millions of years apart, you idiots. >:("
Do you know ANYONE who thought the dolphin scene was funny? Anyone at all?
:)
I liked it.
I don't think its at all unreasonable to stop a burglar from intruding into your home, and I don't think its unreasonable to stop a terrorist from killing thousands of civilians.
You're missing the point. Everyone will agree with you that it's not unreasonable to stop terrorists. The argument is that it IS unreasonable to circumvent all the rules and laws that we say we honor and cherish to do so.
I would submit to you that in every single war the US has ever engaged in, civil liberties were curtailed far more dramatically than in our current conflict. Abraham Lincoln suspended congress and was for a short time the only 'dictator' the US ever had. FDR curtailed liberties for far, far more people than will ever be passing through Guantanamo.
First, I don't care who's done it in the past. It's still not right. Second, just because the administration says we're in a "War on Terror" doesn't make it a "real" war. The War on Terror is no more a war than the War of Drugs, or the War on Poverty. Third, even if it was a real war, can you tell me when will it be over?
We're spying on OTHER peoples populaces, and should they happen to call someone inside our borders, well so be it.
Um. If the person in the other country calls someone in the US, and the government listens in, then the government IS spying on a member of its own populace.
I agree that many people are probably motivated by 'fear of terrists'. I'm not.
Then how do you rationalize playing fast and loose with the law in order to try to find the terrists?
And science doesn't hit an "infinite regress"? What caused the Big Bang?
Possibly the collision of branes in higher-dimensional space. But since our concept of time begins with the Big Bang, in a sense the Big Bang had no cause. Additionally, once you get to the realm of quamtum mechanics, there are uncaused events happening all the time, everywhere. The Big Bang might just have been a more energetic version.
Science's dirty little secret is that they have no idea where anything came from.
Whatever, dude.
To me, trying to figure out how life originated it outside the realm of science.
Baloney. We already have some promising ideas in that direction.
Stick to what we do know.
If we stuck to what we know, we'd still be relatively weak gatherer-scavengers living on the savannahs and trying to avoid the lions.
No, this issue has been reviewed many times by the Justice Department for compliance with the laws.
Also, you realize the Justice Department is a Cabinet department, ie, it's part of the executive branch, not the judicial?
You act as if this hasn't been going on for about 60 years.
I don't care if it's been going on since the Pleistocene.
No, this issue has been reviewed many times by the Justice Department for compliance with the laws. They believe it is in compliance.
I believe the Justice Department is wrong on this issue. We shall see.
They need warrants as it pertains to law in this country. Stop pretending that the Constitution applies to non citizens outside of the country.
Who are those non-citizens calling in this country then?
Besides, I have been told by many legal dudes that when it comes to national security it will be found to be legal.
Legal dudes, eh?
The ACLU is simply an arm of the Democratic party to shove their agenda through that they can't get through via legislature.
Oh please.
The Wire taps are ONLY on International phone calls, If tapping someone's phone who is calling Pakistan, is going to make me safer, DO IT. If they are innocent, then they have nothing to worry about.
This is how freedom dies. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.
I'm sure you won't mind if I personally listen in on all your conversations to make sure you're not a terrorist. If you're innocent, you have nothing to worry about, right?
Are we really concerned that a government screener is going to learn about our toilet habits by listening to a phone call then use that information to embarrass us?
No, we're concerned that the government sees clear to ignore laws that it feels are inconvenient.
Remember this is ONLY international phone calls.
I don't care if whoever it is is calling Osama bin Laden directly on his Friends and Family line. They need to get a goddamned warrant, or stop pretending that this is a nation of laws.
The ACLU needs to be disolved..
You need your head examined.
The doctor did an MRI scan on Baltar. There was no foreign objects.
:)
There are no foreign objects... in his head. What if the chip is implanted... elsewhere?
Can't you tell that Baltar IS a Cylon????
Baltar is so NOT a Cylon.
Do you realize what the infinite complexity of a single cell is?
Do you realize the infinite complexity of a single ice crystal? I guess it never snows in your world, unless God makes each snowflake personally.
) life never comes from non-life
Error number 1. Life clearly had to come from non-life at some point, otherwise we wouldn't be here. Even if God Did It (tm), life still came from non-life.
2) explosions don't bring order
Error number 2. Nothing to do with evolution at all.
3) Mutations occur but almost always bring harm and NEVER add new information to a genetic chain. New information is required for one species to change or evolve into another and this does not occur in observable nature anywhere.
Errors 3 and 4. Mutations can and do add new information, but even if it didn't, that's OK because new information is not required for speciation. Also, speciation has been observed.
4) Science itself was vastly vived by a creationist perspective. The creation around us suggests a Creator that is why it is called creation.
Error 5. Meaningless statement.
Evolutionists can't take the heat which is why they get so angry at opposing views.
No, they get mad when people attempt to trumpet their religious beliefs as a valid scientific theory. Well, they're not.
Step back folks and think for yourselves, study both sides
Scientifically speaking, there is only one side.
And going to SA finds a webpage which is devoid of much more than a request for donations... real useful.
You do realize of course that the reason for the stripped-down page is that site is hosted in New Orleans. Now, can you think of any event recently that might have caused them to go offline?
Never mind trotting out black holes, billion-solar-mass black holes
Um, these almost certainly exist.
galactic lensing,
This definitely exists.
the Big Bang
has quite a bit of evidence for it.
zero-point energy
This exists too.
That, and cropping from Hubble pictures anything embarrassing, such as quasars actually in front of opaque nearby galaxies.
Cite?
and Big Bang is looking iffier every month.
Doubtful.
These interesting moons have one thing in common, they are huge.
Actually, Enceladus, at 500 km diameter, isn't very big at all as far as moons go.
Macro evolution, on the other hand, attempts to explain hot how things change, but how they DID change in the PAST.
Er, what? That's not what people usually mean when they talk about macroevolution. Usually they are talking about things like speciation. And since we've observed speciation to happen, we've seen macroevolution. The whole argument is kind of silly since "macro" and "micro" evolution are artificial terms. Macroevolution is just microevolution plus time.
and all this happened without leaving billions of transitional fossils behind as evidence.
A) We have lots and lots of transitional fossils. B) Fossilization is a very rare event. And C) the fossil record is the weakest evidence for evolution. If we had no fossils at all, evolution would still have massive support.
But, science still calls it a theory. It is not fact. It is not fact because evolution can not yet be proved conclusively.
Sigh. NO theory is EVER proven conclusively. Which is why we still talk about the germ theory of disease. If you want proof, stick to geometry.
I don't believe in evolution
Except that we've seen evolution happen. We know it happens. All they are arguing about are the details, not whather it occurs. Not "believing" in evolution is equivalent to not "believing" that things fall when you drop them.
Unfortunately, most scientists today view evolution as infalsible.
Cite, please. Evolution is easily falsifiable.
I don't understand this post. Are you saying the Mexicans are stealing our movies?
Our dollar loses more value every day as the Fed inflates our currency. That is a fact.
Um. The Fed doesn't inflate our currency. Banks inflate the currency. Here, read this.
Anyhow, what exactly would be wrong with a Christian republic?
Because not everyone accepts the principles of Christianity as being true, desirable, or relevant.
A scientist today who stumbles upon a discovery that, among other things, disproves the theory of relativity
Baloney. Any scientist who stumbled upon such a discovery would be absolutely guaranteed to win the Nobel Prize and probably get as much funding as the wanted.
I'm simply saying that it's folly for the scientific community to not even consider alternatives
You seem to think that no one has ever tested Einstein's ideas. Well, people have, and they've passed. So far. If someone comes up with another theory, it must explain everything as well as Einstein did, better in fact, and it must be testable.
You can go onto Usenet and find a dozen crackpots who claim to have overturned Relativity. They all tend to fail because the crackpot hasn't understood some basic principle, or don't know that there's already been experiments which rule out their ideas.
Wrong. Here's a quote from Cecil Adams on the subject:
You're explaining the symtoms but not the cause. *Why* do you have huge cities. *Why* do people drive miles to work.
Because while people want to work in the city (or have to), or have it available for theater/nightlife/whatever, no one actually wants to live there because on the whole, they are dirty, smelly, grim, crime-ridden hellholes.
That's why.
Concerning the price of oil/gas, do you think that if prices keep rising like they are (+$0.15 this past weekend alone), do you think we'll even be able to afford space travel in the future? It used to be that the hardware was the expensive part. Imagine if the cost of fuel eventually rises above the cost of the shuttles themselves.
:)
The shuttle doesn't burn diesel you know.
The following dis-proofs of your absolute conjecture are all that I can remember off-hand, but are sufficient (oh, and notice that 'gravity' is a Law, not a Theory :-P )
A "Law" is just a mathematical formula to describe how something appears to work. While there is a "law of gravity", it doesn't really explain the mechanism behind gravity. For that you need a theory of gravity, such as the General Theory of Relativity.
A theory is the top of the heap, as far as things go in science. Theories and laws are two entirely different things; a theory doesn't get promoted into a law later on.
Adolf Hitler
Sorry, Hitler believed he was doing God's work. Really.
Vladimir Stalin
Joseph, surely.
My point is this: the worst massacres seem to stem from athiestic leaders, not religious leaders.
What about the Crusades? The Spanish Inquisition? The witch hunts which went on for centuries?
I think smart athiests in general risk falling into that group. They tend to conclude that morality is a nice and useful convention, but nothing more. I.e., there's no reason to follow it beyond the utilitarian benefits of everyone acting morally.
Pretty much, yeah.
So when a smart athiest concludes that acting morally isn't in his best interests, nothing restrains him from acting according to his self-serving desires.
Except for the consequences from the people who don't agree with him.