iNow

How long you think it would take me to find the methodological flaws in those, or the alternative explanations which make more sense? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Except, that wasn't the only thing I cited, nor is the "atheist community" some homogeneous block.

It might behoove you to go study some of this before you continue raising such silly and uninformed objections. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v319/n6056/abs/319751a0.html

No thanks. I don't know you, nor do I trust you. Your first and only post is an attachment that could harm my system? Do you think I was born yesterday? Discuss it here, or go away.

Sorry. Wrong. Just because they are in the government doesn't mean the First Amendment to our constitution suddenly stops applying to them.

Living organisms like yeast are responsible for converting sugars into alcohol. If you add too much, or in the wrong order, you can kill the yeast and end the process. The aging process happens after... when the distillation is done. It's a lot like making tea. You put the liquor into oak barrels (or casks or some similar) and the wood and char mix with the liquor (just like a tea bag will mix with the water when making tea).

Sigh... http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_shape.html The universe was known to be flat to within about 15% accuracy prior to the WMAP results. WMAP has confirmed this result with very high accuracy and precision. We now know that the universe is flat with only a 2% margin of error. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Many people ask "why is there something instead of nothing?" Many people assert that "Nothing can come from nothing, therefore god did it." The video explains why this is specious, and how our understanding of QM shows that something comes from nothing all of the time. Much of the rest of the thread has been a debate about the semantics of the term "nothing," and people who are themselves believers trying to find ways to rationalize away the evidence which speaks against their beliefs.

Or, I could just point you to where I've already demonstrated unequivocally that... Not only does prayer NOT work, but it is often detrimental. http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?p=510242post510242 Just because people keep repeating the lie that prayer works does not make it a valid or true assertion. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged See my link above, and the links contained within.

This really short video does a fine job of addressing the core discussion this thread was intended to have. It serves as a nice recap of the primary concepts, without getting too bogged down in technical details. Enjoy. kK90eVHsdDc

That went without saying.

What is your evidence of this claim? Please provide a source.

I think you may have missed my subtle snark.

I think Psychology and Neurobiology do a FAR better job at explaining supernatural phenomenon than QM ever will, but that's just my take.

Well, anything is possible. As a person who exists and appreciates the scientific method, I have to concede that many things are possible. It's possible that my girlfriend only stays with me because a little angel with arrows keeps shooting her in the ear. It's possible my dog sleeps because a unicorn farted and it makes him pass out. It's possible that we all live in the Matrix... Sure... It's possible. It's just not probable. It's superfluous. We can explain things perfectly well without a designer... so you have to ask yourself... really... what's the point of adding it at all? I don't think it's crazy per se, but I do think such belief is delusional. Do you believe in the tooth fairy? If not, why not? Now, apply that same logic to a designer. It really could just be chance. 98OTsYfTt-c v8nYTJf62sE

People can believe whatever they want, including that there was an intelligent designer AND that it designed the evolutionary algorithm. I just find the designer unnecessary... like a giant wart that doesn't do much but distract people from the actual subject and reality-based description. 2Clm6nlWxzc

I think you are making the common mistake of assuming spacetime to be some sort of tangible substance. It's not. It's just a word we use to help aid our understanding... essentially a manifold which we can use in our calculations when we are mathematically modeling the universe, but it is not something which itself has any physical or temporal properties. For that reason, I find the argument you've just put forth to be lacking. In order for your assertion to hold, spacetime would have to be something tangible, and it's not.

Look into the Casimir effect.

If someone in this thread had the good sense to simply define the term "NEWS" in how they are using it, I'm sure much of this silliness would end pretty quickly. This is no longer a thread about FOX and its flaws. It's a thread about each of our own individual and unique definitions of "what is news." There is no disagreement about what Fox is doing, only in how a term is applied. In short, iron out the semantics and we might actually accomplish something or reach an understanding here.

Yes. It's amazing how much more we can know after 4 years.

Super cool stuff here: http://blog.sciencegeekgirl.com/2009/10/27/science-activities-for-halloween/ h/t Swansont

Thanks! Errm... Oh, wait. Never mind.

There have been studies with many non-human primates that show them able to reproduce symbols and draw them themselves. Either way, the idea is that social modeling in a behavioral sense is not the same as reverse engineering a complex machine or system, so despite your (well deserved) snark, my point stands. I tend to agree with your point that there is a degree of overlap between copying behavior and copying a system, but the level of intellectual abstraction required to copy a system is far greater, and hence not equivalent nor as common... despite the obvious overlap on the periphery.

Either you don't know what the word objectivism refers to, or you're simply repeating a falsehood you heard somewhere else. Objectivism didn't begin until the late 1950s/early 1960s... Yet Einstein died in 1955. The concept of linear time seems to negate your point.

Through use of a crytographical key or primer. Geesh... Didn't anyone read Carl Sagan's Contact? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_%28cryptography%29

We don't. We only have models which seem to describe the universe. Once we realize those models fail or are inaccurate, we try to find out where they were lacking and find a better description to replace or supplement them.

Copying Text [math]\ne[/math] Reverse engineering Completely different abilities being described, so it's important not to conflate the two.