0 tens of thousands.
Current estimates are around 3000-3500. There was a tremendous amount of double counting, and people being on the list of suspected dead just because their foriegn relatives couldn't get in contact with them and didn't know that working in "New York" is not the same thing as working in the WTC.
But how does anyone make sense of such numbers anyway? My hometown in NJ had funerals around the clock. At least in Afghanistan, entire familes died all at once, so they didn't have to go through any of that unpleasantness.
He's not right-wing? He's not extreme right wing? Everyone but Bush (who can't say so in so many words for good reason) agrees so, and some of us are GLAD to have a right-wing extremist in the White House. So what's YOUR problem?
----I say this because the far left is largely characterized by reliance on Moral Relativism and a retreat to an intellectually weak stance in which one refuses to acknowledge that some moral systems are based on logic, reason, and the common good and some are based on arbitrary systems of faith that do not promote maximal Utility by any sort of reality-based perception.----
Not that I'm a big fan of the far left, but this claim is total rhetoric. It's especially goofy in the case of Chomsky, who, far from moral relativism, is making MORAL judgements of the behavior of the U.S. all the time. "Moral Relativism" is usually just habitual claim made whenever someone doesn't feel like defending their moral opinions against contradictory ones. It's rare that any target actually IS a relativist. The charge is usually totally unfair to the target. And worse, it's usually unfair to the few actual relatavists. There almost never any actual discussion of or understanding of what the "relatavist" position actually is. Virtually every account of it that I've seen is a mishcharacterization of it as a form of nihilism.
Regardless of the what the book is, the movie's way of being "non-judgemental" is to simply refuse to explain anything or touch on any subject of political controversy at all, and thus not have to stoop to making making judgements beyond simply the conduct of the good guy soldiers and bad guy Somalis. Instead, everything gets, blowd up real good. The end.
I just wish people like you worked for the PR wing of the CIA.
I think the Chinese ambassador would simply be so dumbfounded by that answer that we'd get away with scot-free.
You are not a freak: you're obviously just too rich to know what to do with your money. Seriously, IN MY DREAMS am I able to afford buying things to the tune of several hundred dollars that I then don't even use.
---It may sound like a cop-out to say so, but there's no more detail of Saruman's evil than there is of Gandalf's good.---
Not true. Gandalf is tempted by the ring, Gandalf is hesitant, makes mistakes, etc. The movie Gandalf is actually more conflicted than the one in the books. But out of all the reams of extra dialogue for Sauruman in the movie, I just don't see why they took away his complexity. Instead of Sauruman really seeking the ring for himself, and Gandalf's great line "only one hand can weild the one!" we have Gandalf simply saying "he does not share power!" Instead of a once wise man seeking to do good via evil means, we have a wise man simply giving up the pretense of good altogether.
---Where did you come by this information?---
Check www.tolkienonline.com and their list of film changes. It's not totally confirmed, but a suspicious picture of a white figure impaled on an iron wheel at Isengard has everyone in an uproar.
Just as a note, the common trope "The weatherman can't even accurately predict tomorrow's weather, much less next week, much less years from now." is a rather misleading and unhelpful one. What we expect weathermen to predict are chaotic eddies on a very very small scale, as far as the expanse of the whole global weather system goes. So there is no justification behind the argument that, just because we cannot predict the particular _configuration_ of next week's weather, we can't predict long term trends. These are two very different things, and the latter may prove to be the far far easier of the two.
But that's exactly my point: the expanded Saruman's appearance time, but didn't expand his character any, and in fact diminished and simplified him by cutting out his desire to surplant Sauron and basically revealing everything about him right off the bat. We spent countless scenes with him only to reveal that yes, he's evil. But Saruman was always a more interesting breed of evil than that...
Worse, it's looking pretty likely that he DIES in Two Towers: there is no Scouring of the Shire.
PLEASE someone tell me that they have scenes that develop Saruman's character more. In the movie, they managed to vastly increase his screen time, while at the same time amazingly _robbing_ him of depth. I think if the had the "many colors" exchange between him and Gandalf lying around to add, it would do wonders to deepen his character.
And frankly, I could use some re-cuts as well as some additions. There were many needless little drags in the film (Sam's endless slow-mo drowning, Frodo and the Fellowships two minute long reaction shots to Frodo being skewered, for osme), and several places in which characters simple read out unecessary expository dialogue. WHY WHY WHY does Gandalf TELL Frodo where Biblo went? Why ruin the surprise? There were also too many Merry and Pippin scenes that added nothing and seemed cheesy: like their last scene with Frodo at the end.
I doubt it. Why would the effect of something that happened to the consciousness of one object (your brain) have on another (the computer)? Very likely, YOUR consciousness would snuff out just as if you had gone unconscious/dead permanently. The computer-you would experience consciousness when turned on, and remember doing so preveiously, but from the perspective of the first you, it would be no different than death. From the perspective of the second you, it would be no different than if it had been someone ELSE's consciousness- it still would simply be aware, and believe that it had existed before. And what would happen if the wetware you wasn't destroyed? You'd probably just have two different consciousnesses running around. The fact that they both have the same memories and are for all intents and purposes the same person doesn't mean that their internal experiences are in any way linked or transfer over between each other.
Proving discrimination is not always clear cut, and its further not always clear where it's coming from. For isntance, discrimination can still thrives in bussinesses where the organization is not racists, but the clients, adn so the org panders to them.
However, it's rather strange that someone who would be making so much money for the org would get downsized. Did he go down with an entire division? Or was he just one of the scattered picks?
---State-mandated, systemic, global solutions are needed. They involve rules, coercion, force, and surveillance of the free market.---
Well sure, the more competative the market, the less likely discrimination will be, even if the mangement is racist, and _especially_ if competitors are racist.
Doubtful? This happens much more commonly than one might think. Certain religions are permitted to prosletyze employees, sometimes even in "optional" sessions that are anything but: other religions you'd better hide your affiliation with. And if you don't have a religion: you'd best fake it. It certainly isn't a problem as much in larger cities, but I've talked to plenty of people that had to be in the closet with their religious beliefs or lack thereof for fear of getting fired.
---Far more likely is that you were fired for being a pagan asshole. The sort of in-your-face jerk who's gotta shove his religion.---
I've never met a pagan who gave a damn whether I was part of their religion or not, so I'd have to say that YOUR statement is extremely doubtful (though I'm sure there are some). However, I've worked with people who filled every spare minute of time (and sometimes not so spare) trying to convert fellow or subordinate employees, without any fear of discriminatory action against them.
What sort of monster sends people to eternal bliss or eternal damnation based simply on something as trivial as what they happen to believe or not believe? Even we measly HUMANS have long since decided that such behavior is despicable.
--- God didn't have to appear to me personally and tell me that he loves me. He left plenty of evidence in both the scriptures written by inspired men, and in the world around me.---
This is what you believe, certainly, and I am glad you enjoy believing it so much. However, not all people believe this, or think the scriptures or the world around you point to any such conclusion. You can either respect this as a legitimate difference, or try to argue the point, but few non-believers are very impressed with scripture and long-ago discredited arguments from supposed design.
---I don't have to see a miracle to believe that they happened, just as I don't have to put my hand on the burner of the stove to believe that it is hot.---
This is a false analougy, which you should be able to see on closer examination: so can you explain to me why it is? I wont accuse you of dishonesty for making it, but be more careful next time not to make such misleading arguments.
--- I have seen rather large horses placed in small areas, but they didn't produce dogs or cats as offspring to use the space more effectively.---
Put quite simply, it is GOOD for the theory of evolution that you have not seen this. If you had, that would DISPROVE the theory of evolution, because it would show that natural selection + long periods of time is NOT necessary for macro changes: intelligent design can simply spring into form when it needs to.
And that's what's truly funny about this objection: not only does it mistate what evolution would expect to see, it actually states as "ridiculous" and "I've never seen it" something that is almost EXACTLY what the creationists are saying happened: spontanoues order with no visible natural ordering mechanism behind it (i.e., a god said "poof!" and it was).
---But I have never seen a horse become a different species, just because its environment changed.---
This statement is just ridiculous. YOU have never seen it? For goodness sake, unless you are a few thousand years old, it'd be unlikely that you'd notice such differences. Evolution is an exceedingly SLOW process, measured in human time.
Even so, there HAVE been a few odd examples of speciation (generally defined as enough change so that two populations can no longer breed with each other) occuring in times short enough for humans to remember (the most complex animal case being a type of fish, since quicker species changes are ore likely in creatures with less complexity). Chase down the talk.origins FAQ for a reference.
---Please explain to me how a human eye evolved. It has multiple parts that cannot benefit the body in any other way apart from their job in the eye.---
I forgive you for making such a silly argument, since doubtless you did not think it through, and are merely repeating the claims of "intelligent design" advocates. But, in short, it is simply NOT true that an eye cannot function without certain parts, or that various parts do not have functions that are useful even in isolation. Certainly, it cannot function _as_ well, but then, that's exactly what one might expect as you go back along a line of descent. But a single photo sensitive cell is better than no cell at all. Put that cell in a depression, and you have a crude sense of the light's direction. And so on. A perfectly plausible evolution of the eye from simple photo receptor to the mamillian eye is well described in many books on evolutionary biology. It i hard to say for certain that this course is correct, since eyes do no fossilize, but coupled with the range of eyes in nature (and the fact that an "eye" has evolved in at least eight different courses, some of which turned out much better in an engineering sense than human eyes), we can most certainly forward a perfectly _plausible_ and sensible description of how eyes can evolve from even the simplest of components.
"Irreducible complexity" almost always relies on an argument from incredulity, and in almost every specific case I know of, it has been rather easily debunked (most spectacularly in the famous mousetrap example). Try again.
---Not that I expect finding such a thing would make any more difference than the thousands of well- documented "impossible" finds have already made to the Church of the Evolution...---
Such as?
This argument cracks me up though: it's essentially trying to argue that the natural world is too unnatural to be natural. Eh? Natural/unnatural compared to what? That other, more "natural" universe you happen to have in your pocketeses?
If you really think scientific academia is bunk, you are making a pretty tall claim that I expect to see some backup on.
---Either way, you've got to accept some form of supernaturalism, because "something coming from nothing" is not a natural (as in naturalism) phenomena.---
first of all; what, exactly, is "supernaturalism"? This word, to me, has always seemed to be gibberish trying to conceal the lack of an explanation. All that calling something "supernatural" accomplishes is try to hide from the fact that it has not in the least answered the question of how something came from nothing: because where did the "supernatural force" come from? Giving it a cool metaphysical-sounding name doesn't relieve one of the burden of proof.
But even more importantly: what does this have to do with evolution? The theory of evolution doesn't even deal with the _origins_ of life, much less the origins of matter.
---In detail, a million times simpler is dead. Ten times simpler than prokaryotic is generally dead.---
At the levels we're talking about, saying that something is "alive" or "dead" is not particularly enlightening, and usually misleading. There is no hard and fast line between "alive" and "dead." Ten times simpler than prokaryotic may not be alive in the sense that a prokaryote is "alive," but that doesn't mean it's inorganic, or has no complexity, or even no self-reproducing complexity.
---you have the challenge of explaining the material universe not having turned all of the kinetic energy into heat an eternity ago.---
Eh? Why exactly- what reason do you have to think that this is what SHOULD have happened? The reality is that the material universe exists: one needs to explain how it works, not try to prove that it exists...
---I think that the "invisible superhero" makes a bit of sense given that you may need to bend the known rules of physics to allow for eternally existent matter.---
First of all: what evidence is there that matter is "eternally existent"? And second of all, you don't have to bend the rules of physics at all: as victor Sternger has pointed out, it is perfectly acceptable to the laws of physics for the universe to litterally come out of nothing, the way that quantum particle/anti-particle pairs do ALL THE TIME everywhere.
However, the more important point here, that you missed, is that "invisible superhero" explanations are unacceptable as explainations because a) they violate the very bounds of reasoned dicussion (because once this becomes an acceptable "explanation" we've destroyed the very need to explain anything at all: the "explanation" can work for ANYTHING) and b) they do not actually "explain" ANYTHING (i.e. that "something of unknown characteristics did it in an unknown way" is just a fancy way of saying "I don't know").
First of all, science no longer plays Platonic games like "kind" as if their were some higher-plane types the variation of which is tricky bussiness.
But secondly, the theory of evolution is most certainly scientific. This is a moot point: claiming that it is not is simply in contradiction to virtually all accounts of what science is. You're going to have a _very_ hard time finding a preponderance of accredited theorists of science who would be willing to agree with your view. And indeed, it quite regularly makes testable predictions about what sorts of things we should expect to find if the theory is true, and these predictions have proved incredibly accurate. We have also been able to build models from evidence, and test these models in the real world. Just because something is historical does not mean that science is toothless in the face of it. Certainly, one cannot prove that _history_ happened in a certain way, but one can certainly amass all the evidence one can about the functioning of the world, records left by this functioning, and make and test hypothesises.
I will note, however, that Gandalf here does seem a bit confused at first. On the BBC tapes, Gandalf is quite certain who he is (when they accuse him of being Saruman, he replies NO!), but in the book, he has to hear his name spoken, and he says something like "Gandalf... yes that was he name... I was Gandalf." and then after a moments thought he says "Yes, you may still call me Gandalf"
Unfortunately for the "he's a Valar play acting" theory, this person, whoever he is, does later go on to say that he has passed through "fire and deep water" and has forgotten much that he once knew, and learned much that he had forgotten. So it sounds most like it IS Gandalf, but a Gandalf that has had a chance to replenish himself, regain what he once was, at the price of losing some the humanity he had taken on.
While LOTR is NOT meant as an allegory, you have to understand that this does not prevent it form being at least intended in theory, as a pervasively Christian work. Tolkien believed that essentially all great myth was a reflection of the "truth" of his God's creation, and LOTR is no different: in fact that belief is in part what drove his powerful feeling that he was unearthing some mythic past that had been lost, rather than simply telling a yarn. In fact, this belief even went like this: greek myths that emphasize ressurection and redemption are actually anticipatory _reflections_ of the "true" christ story. Now, for the reasons I noted, this theory may not work out in practice the way it was meant to, largely because not everyone shares the assumptions it is based on (that all "forgiveness" before and after the invention of Christianity inherently reflects Christianity). But it is utterly unquestionable that that IS how _Tolkien_ himself saw it working.
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0 tens of thousands. Current estimates are around 3000-3500. There was a tremendous amount of double counting, and people being on the list of suspected dead just because their foriegn relatives couldn't get in contact with them and didn't know that working in "New York" is not the same thing as working in the WTC. But how does anyone make sense of such numbers anyway? My hometown in NJ had funerals around the clock. At least in Afghanistan, entire familes died all at once, so they didn't have to go through any of that unpleasantness.
He's not right-wing? He's not extreme right wing? Everyone but Bush (who can't say so in so many words for good reason) agrees so, and some of us are GLAD to have a right-wing extremist in the White House. So what's YOUR problem?
----I say this because the far left is largely characterized by reliance on Moral Relativism and a retreat to an intellectually weak stance in which one refuses to acknowledge that some moral systems are based on logic, reason, and the common good and some are based on arbitrary systems of faith that do not promote maximal Utility by any sort of reality-based perception.----
Not that I'm a big fan of the far left, but this claim is total rhetoric. It's especially goofy in the case of Chomsky, who, far from moral relativism, is making MORAL judgements of the behavior of the U.S. all the time. "Moral Relativism" is usually just habitual claim made whenever someone doesn't feel like defending their moral opinions against contradictory ones. It's rare that any target actually IS a relativist. The charge is usually totally unfair to the target.
And worse, it's usually unfair to the few actual relatavists. There almost never any actual discussion of or understanding of what the "relatavist" position actually is. Virtually every account of it that I've seen is a mishcharacterization of it as a form of nihilism.
Regardless of the what the book is, the movie's way of being "non-judgemental" is to simply refuse to explain anything or touch on any subject of political controversy at all, and thus not have to stoop to making making judgements beyond simply the conduct of the good guy soldiers and bad guy Somalis.
Instead, everything gets, blowd up real good. The end.
I just wish people like you worked for the PR wing of the CIA. I think the Chinese ambassador would simply be so dumbfounded by that answer that we'd get away with scot-free.
You are not a freak: you're obviously just too rich to know what to do with your money. Seriously, IN MY DREAMS am I able to afford buying things to the tune of several hundred dollars that I then don't even use.
---It may sound like a cop-out to say so, but there's no more detail of Saruman's evil than there is of Gandalf's good.--- Not true. Gandalf is tempted by the ring, Gandalf is hesitant, makes mistakes, etc. The movie Gandalf is actually more conflicted than the one in the books. But out of all the reams of extra dialogue for Sauruman in the movie, I just don't see why they took away his complexity. Instead of Sauruman really seeking the ring for himself, and Gandalf's great line "only one hand can weild the one!" we have Gandalf simply saying "he does not share power!" Instead of a once wise man seeking to do good via evil means, we have a wise man simply giving up the pretense of good altogether. ---Where did you come by this information?--- Check www.tolkienonline.com and their list of film changes. It's not totally confirmed, but a suspicious picture of a white figure impaled on an iron wheel at Isengard has everyone in an uproar.
Just as a note, the common trope "The weatherman can't even accurately predict tomorrow's weather, much less next week, much less years from now." is a rather misleading and unhelpful one. What we expect weathermen to predict are chaotic eddies on a very very small scale, as far as the expanse of the whole global weather system goes. So there is no justification behind the argument that, just because we cannot predict the particular _configuration_ of next week's weather, we can't predict long term trends. These are two very different things, and the latter may prove to be the far far easier of the two.
But that's exactly my point: the expanded Saruman's appearance time, but didn't expand his character any, and in fact diminished and simplified him by cutting out his desire to surplant Sauron and basically revealing everything about him right off the bat. We spent countless scenes with him only to reveal that yes, he's evil. But Saruman was always a more interesting breed of evil than that...
Worse, it's looking pretty likely that he DIES in Two Towers: there is no Scouring of the Shire.
PLEASE someone tell me that they have scenes that develop Saruman's character more. In the movie, they managed to vastly increase his screen time, while at the same time amazingly _robbing_ him of depth. I think if the had the "many colors" exchange between him and Gandalf lying around to add, it would do wonders to deepen his character.
And frankly, I could use some re-cuts as well as some additions. There were many needless little drags in the film (Sam's endless slow-mo drowning, Frodo and the Fellowships two minute long reaction shots to Frodo being skewered, for osme), and several places in which characters simple read out unecessary expository dialogue. WHY WHY WHY does Gandalf TELL Frodo where Biblo went? Why ruin the surprise? There were also too many Merry and Pippin scenes that added nothing and seemed cheesy: like their last scene with Frodo at the end.
I doubt it. Why would the effect of something that happened to the consciousness of one object (your brain) have on another (the computer)?
Very likely, YOUR consciousness would snuff out just as if you had gone unconscious/dead permanently. The computer-you would experience consciousness when turned on, and remember doing so preveiously, but from the perspective of the first you, it would be no different than death. From the perspective of the second you, it would be no different than if it had been someone ELSE's consciousness- it still would simply be aware, and believe that it had existed before. And what would happen if the wetware you wasn't destroyed? You'd probably just have two different consciousnesses running around. The fact that they both have the same memories and are for all intents and purposes the same person doesn't mean that their internal experiences are in any way linked or transfer over between each other.
Proving discrimination is not always clear cut, and its further not always clear where it's coming from. For isntance, discrimination can still thrives in bussinesses where the organization is not racists, but the clients, adn so the org panders to them.
However, it's rather strange that someone who would be making so much money for the org would get downsized. Did he go down with an entire division? Or was he just one of the scattered picks?
---State-mandated, systemic, global solutions are needed. They involve rules, coercion, force, and surveillance of the free market.---
Well sure, the more competative the market, the less likely discrimination will be, even if the mangement is racist, and _especially_ if competitors are racist.
Doubtful? This happens much more commonly than one might think. Certain religions are permitted to prosletyze employees, sometimes even in "optional" sessions that are anything but: other religions you'd better hide your affiliation with. And if you don't have a religion: you'd best fake it. It certainly isn't a problem as much in larger cities, but I've talked to plenty of people that had to be in the closet with their religious beliefs or lack thereof for fear of getting fired.
---Far more likely is that you were fired for being a pagan asshole. The sort of in-your-face jerk who's gotta shove his religion.---
I've never met a pagan who gave a damn whether I was part of their religion or not, so I'd have to say that YOUR statement is extremely doubtful (though I'm sure there are some). However, I've worked with people who filled every spare minute of time (and sometimes not so spare) trying to convert fellow or subordinate employees, without any fear of discriminatory action against them.
What sort of monster sends people to eternal bliss or eternal damnation based simply on something as trivial as what they happen to believe or not believe? Even we measly HUMANS have long since decided that such behavior is despicable.
--- God didn't have to appear to me personally and tell me that he loves me. He left plenty of evidence in both the scriptures written by inspired men, and in the world around me.---
This is what you believe, certainly, and I am glad you enjoy believing it so much. However, not all people believe this, or think the scriptures or the world around you point to any such conclusion. You can either respect this as a legitimate difference, or try to argue the point, but few non-believers are very impressed with scripture and long-ago discredited arguments from supposed design.
---I don't have to see a miracle to believe that they happened, just as I don't have to put my hand on the burner of the stove to believe that it is hot.---
This is a false analougy, which you should be able to see on closer examination: so can you explain to me why it is? I wont accuse you of dishonesty for making it, but be more careful next time not to make such misleading arguments.
--- I have seen rather large horses placed in small areas, but they didn't produce dogs or cats as offspring to use the space more effectively.---
Put quite simply, it is GOOD for the theory of evolution that you have not seen this. If you had, that would DISPROVE the theory of evolution, because it would show that natural selection + long periods of time is NOT necessary for macro changes: intelligent design can simply spring into form when it needs to.
And that's what's truly funny about this objection: not only does it mistate what evolution would expect to see, it actually states as "ridiculous" and "I've never seen it" something that is almost EXACTLY what the creationists are saying happened: spontanoues order with no visible natural ordering mechanism behind it (i.e., a god said "poof!" and it was).
---But I have never seen a horse become a different species, just because its environment changed.---
This statement is just ridiculous. YOU have never seen it? For goodness sake, unless you are a few thousand years old, it'd be unlikely that you'd notice such differences. Evolution is an exceedingly SLOW process, measured in human time.
Even so, there HAVE been a few odd examples of speciation (generally defined as enough change so that two populations can no longer breed with each other) occuring in times short enough for humans to remember (the most complex animal case being a type of fish, since quicker species changes are ore likely in creatures with less complexity). Chase down the talk.origins FAQ for a reference.
---Please explain to me how a human eye evolved. It has multiple parts that cannot benefit the body in any other way apart from their job in the eye.---
I forgive you for making such a silly argument, since doubtless you did not think it through, and are merely repeating the claims of "intelligent design" advocates. But, in short, it is simply NOT true that an eye cannot function without certain parts, or that various parts do not have functions that are useful even in isolation. Certainly, it cannot function _as_ well, but then, that's exactly what one might expect as you go back along a line of descent. But a single photo sensitive cell is better than no cell at all. Put that cell in a depression, and you have a crude sense of the light's direction. And so on. A perfectly plausible evolution of the eye from simple photo receptor to the mamillian eye is well described in many books on evolutionary biology. It i hard to say for certain that this course is correct, since eyes do no fossilize, but coupled with the range of eyes in nature (and the fact that an "eye" has evolved in at least eight different courses, some of which turned out much better in an engineering sense than human eyes), we can most certainly forward a perfectly _plausible_ and sensible description of how eyes can evolve from even the simplest of components.
"Irreducible complexity" almost always relies on an argument from incredulity, and in almost every specific case I know of, it has been rather easily debunked (most spectacularly in the famous mousetrap example). Try again.
I think you responded to the wrong person. The comment you responded to was something I was quoting and _disagreeing_ with in the parent post.
---Not that I expect finding such a thing would make any more difference than the thousands of well- documented "impossible" finds have already made to the Church of the Evolution...---
Such as?
This argument cracks me up though: it's essentially trying to argue that the natural world is too unnatural to be natural. Eh? Natural/unnatural compared to what? That other, more "natural" universe you happen to have in your pocketeses?
If you really think scientific academia is bunk, you are making a pretty tall claim that I expect to see some backup on.
---Either way, you've got to accept some form of supernaturalism, because "something coming from nothing" is not a natural (as in naturalism) phenomena.---
first of all; what, exactly, is "supernaturalism"? This word, to me, has always seemed to be gibberish trying to conceal the lack of an explanation. All that calling something "supernatural" accomplishes is try to hide from the fact that it has not in the least answered the question of how something came from nothing: because where did the "supernatural force" come from? Giving it a cool metaphysical-sounding name doesn't relieve one of the burden of proof.
But even more importantly: what does this have to do with evolution? The theory of evolution doesn't even deal with the _origins_ of life, much less the origins of matter.
---In detail, a million times simpler is dead. Ten times simpler than prokaryotic is generally dead.---
At the levels we're talking about, saying that something is "alive" or "dead" is not particularly enlightening, and usually misleading. There is no hard and fast line between "alive" and "dead." Ten times simpler than prokaryotic may not be alive in the sense that a prokaryote is "alive," but that doesn't mean it's inorganic, or has no complexity, or even no self-reproducing complexity.
---you have the challenge of explaining the material universe not having turned all of the kinetic energy into heat an eternity ago.---
Eh? Why exactly- what reason do you have to think that this is what SHOULD have happened? The reality is that the material universe exists: one needs to explain how it works, not try to prove that it exists...
---I think that the "invisible superhero" makes a bit of sense given that you may need to bend the known rules of physics to allow for eternally existent matter.---
First of all: what evidence is there that matter is "eternally existent"? And second of all, you don't have to bend the rules of physics at all: as victor Sternger has pointed out, it is perfectly acceptable to the laws of physics for the universe to litterally come out of nothing, the way that quantum particle/anti-particle pairs do ALL THE TIME everywhere.
However, the more important point here, that you missed, is that "invisible superhero" explanations are unacceptable as explainations because a) they violate the very bounds of reasoned dicussion (because once this becomes an acceptable "explanation" we've destroyed the very need to explain anything at all: the "explanation" can work for ANYTHING) and b) they do not actually "explain" ANYTHING (i.e. that "something of unknown characteristics did it in an unknown way" is just a fancy way of saying "I don't know").
First of all, science no longer plays Platonic games like "kind" as if their were some higher-plane types the variation of which is tricky bussiness.
But secondly, the theory of evolution is most certainly scientific. This is a moot point: claiming that it is not is simply in contradiction to virtually all accounts of what science is. You're going to have a _very_ hard time finding a preponderance of accredited theorists of science who would be willing to agree with your view.
And indeed, it quite regularly makes testable predictions about what sorts of things we should expect to find if the theory is true, and these predictions have proved incredibly accurate. We have also been able to build models from evidence, and test these models in the real world. Just because something is historical does not mean that science is toothless in the face of it. Certainly, one cannot prove that _history_ happened in a certain way, but one can certainly amass all the evidence one can about the functioning of the world, records left by this functioning, and make and test hypothesises.
I will note, however, that Gandalf here does seem a bit confused at first. On the BBC tapes, Gandalf is quite certain who he is (when they accuse him of being Saruman, he replies NO!), but in the book, he has to hear his name spoken, and he says something like "Gandalf... yes that was he name... I was Gandalf." and then after a moments thought he says "Yes, you may still call me Gandalf"
Unfortunately for the "he's a Valar play acting" theory, this person, whoever he is, does later go on to say that he has passed through "fire and deep water" and has forgotten much that he once knew, and learned much that he had forgotten. So it sounds most like it IS Gandalf, but a Gandalf that has had a chance to replenish himself, regain what he once was, at the price of losing some the humanity he had taken on.
While LOTR is NOT meant as an allegory, you have to understand that this does not prevent it form being at least intended in theory, as a pervasively Christian work. Tolkien believed that essentially all great myth was a reflection of the "truth" of his God's creation, and LOTR is no different: in fact that belief is in part what drove his powerful feeling that he was unearthing some mythic past that had been lost, rather than simply telling a yarn. In fact, this belief even went like this: greek myths that emphasize ressurection and redemption are actually anticipatory _reflections_ of the "true" christ story.
Now, for the reasons I noted, this theory may not work out in practice the way it was meant to, largely because not everyone shares the assumptions it is based on (that all "forgiveness" before and after the invention of Christianity inherently reflects Christianity). But it is utterly unquestionable that that IS how _Tolkien_ himself saw it working.