zapatos

Which premise are you talking about? You've got so many. You have not shown this to be true, and are getting quite an argument about it in this thread. Who says a cow has a right to live? A cow has no concept of rights. Rights are a human concept and must be bestowed by people. What people have bestowed these rights on the cow? And given the fact that people kill cows everyday and never go to jail for it, I would go so far as to say cows do not have the right to live. And I'd really like to see some supporting evidence that cows most likely have feelings. Like what? Love? Hate? Anger? How do you know that? Who decided this? You? I don't even know what it means to say that a rabbit has a right not to be eaten by a hawk. Who bestowed that right? Who enforces it? And again, how can you possibly say that without "the moral judgement that living things deserve to live... ...our civilisation would collapse."? Make an argument in between those two statements. It is not an obvious jump from one to the other. I'll bet that if a cow could contemplate this, she would not agree that your life is worth more than hers. What about a newborn calf versus a man with 5 minutes to live? What if the man was the worst human ever to live? And if a human is worth 1 versus a cow worth 6, does that mean that, say, 10 cows are worth more than that human? What if that human was your child? And now a hawk might be worth more than the rabbit if he is smart and has the right moral status. So intelligence is a factor. What about a smart hawk versus a dumb human? Or a human who is mentally impaired? I'm also sure you may get an argument from many regarding your statement that killing flies is morally wrong. Based on all my comments about your declaration of rights and morals, of flies versus bacteria, of smart versus dumb, maybe you can see why I believe it is unreasonable of you to assume that "everyone accepts them". In my opinion you have not shown all of these premises to be true, and if they are not true, then you do not have a sound argument.

I think the fact that it is 20 light years away is not much of an issue when discussing our 'moving in'. It's unlikely we'll ever travel at a significant portion of the speed of light, and even if we do (and manage not to kill ourselves as we crash into a pebble), as you say it could take 80 years to get there. If we can develop a plan to get there in 80 years, it really won't make much difference in the plan for it to take 800 years. If we head for there, the point will not be for the people who board the spacecraft on earth to arrive safely. It will be for their decendents to arrive safely.

Wow. That is quite a set of cojones on you! Thanks anyway but we already have mothers, and the staff of SFN will keep order. Unbelievable.

Please, don't let me stop you. I know that you have never submitted a post that wasn't spot on topic to the OP. And if the originator of this thread is willing to address the question, why should it be a problem with you?

The press does not write press releases. Press releases are, you know, released to the press. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_release

Har! You are too funny. But your taste isn't too weak. I gave you the +1 for Alizee! Joatmon -- What in the heck do you keep doing to the URLs????? Probably that nasty Google stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaSKICzeTaE For the above: I did an 'Add Reply'. I am using Internet Explorer 7. I opened YouTube in another window by clicking on your link. Double clicked on the URL to highlight it. Right clicked to bring up menu and chose copy. Came to this window, right clicked and did a paste. For the below: I highlighted the link from your post, copied it, and pasted it here. They appear to be the same link although your link has the shortened version (with the '...'). Maybe it is related to that. http://www.youtube.c...h?v=ZaSKICzeTaE EDIT: Yep, that is the problem although I don't know why your URL is one way and mine is another. I went back in and changed your URL from 'c...h' to the actual characters which were 'com/watch' and it worked fine.

I had to double check to see who wrote this. This sounds like the same type of 'bronze age goat herder' evidence theists put forward to support their position.

Yes, the URL is what appears in the address bar. I click on the 'reply' button within someone's post to have their post appear within my post. (like I did here) I click on the 'Add Reply' to make a post with only my comments in it. (like I did in my previous post above) If you want to reply to multiple posts within a thread, click on 'MultiQuote' in each post you want to respond to, then click on 'Add Reply'. If you press 'edit', the change will always apply to that post you are editing. The 'edit' option on your post stays there for a limited time. If you do separate replies multiple times in a row, they are automatically merged into one post, unless someone else replies while you are replying. Essentially the system keeps all of the replies in the order they were entered. Also, ydoaPs has a good thread Pinned under "The Lounge" which gives some more information.

I think he was apologizing for what he had written and asking us to ignore his post, not yours. He took out what he had originally written.

Forgive me if I don't accept your musing about a drawing on a piece of paper as evidence about the fundamental nature of the universe. Just because something seems to make sense within the realm of our everyday experience does not necessarily mean it can be applied to the whole universe. Terms like "it must have" and "everything" should be used carefully.

That is fine if that is what you wish to do. However, you should recognize that if you start with an invalid premise, then you will not have a sound argument.

What evidence do you have that this is true?

A Higgs Boson particle walks into a church. The priest says, "Hey, we don't like your kind around here." The particle replies, "But without me, you can't have mass"

Okay, listen and watch.

Look, pal. Victimless crime is a well understood and frequently used term. Try the link I gave you or a Google search of 'victimless crime'. You'll get 650,000 hits.

That's the only difference? Seems to me like a robot wouldn't do much of what I listed. Sure, life on another planet would not need DNA to be considered living.

Probably not as life is generally considered to consist of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life

People believe aliens travel by flying saucer due to numerous claims, so that is how they are depicted in the movies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_saucer

But you are the one who is making them equivalent.

Perhaps we are just not able to communicate clearly. Why don't you have someone else explain it to me who is not bothered by your statement that as you "propulse it far away, you are throwing the object into the past".

I think the problem is that you are using 'into the past' differently than everyone else uses it. If I tell one person (other than you) that I am going to travel 'into the past', and I tell another person that I am going to travel 'back in time', they will both take that to mean the same thing. As far as I can tell, when you say 'into the past', you mean what everyone else would call 'in the distance'. One of the problems is that you sound as if distance and time are the same thing. For example, if something is one light day away, then information about that thing is one day in the past. But if my wife wrote me a note and I am not allowed to open it until tomorrow, then the information in that note is also traveling one day into the past, even though it is not physically moving away from me. I still don't get why you are using terms that can be so confusing. Why not just say that when you throw something away from you it is moving to a place where information from that things takes longer to get to you? I think you need another term other than 'past' to describe what you are saying.

But you did say: Perhaps you can explain the difference between 'backwards in time' and 'into the past'.

I don't. This is clearly the problem.

Who granted that right to the rabbit? Who is enforcing it? What about the hawk's need to eat to live? Who are you to say he doesn't get to eat? People are killing everyday, presumably even you. Ever wash your hands with anti-bacterial soap? Ever swat a fly or eat lettuce? And yet civilization has grown during these activities. It is unreasonable to make the jump from "living things deserve to live" to "Without that basic principle everybody would be killing as they see fit". Your statements are much too broad, and you refer to rights and morals as if everyone accepts them, instead of just you.