Mr Skeptic

What then of me? As an atheist who has restructured a moral system of his own separate from the one in the Bible, doing several of the things forbidden in the Bible as sin no longer brings me any shame, nor do I even feel they are wrong. And I am not the only one. Your statement is essentially a claim that God accepts moral relativism (at least inasmuch as moral relativism is humanly possible); that people are their own judge of sin or innocence via guilt. Yet I consider my moral system incompatible with that of God, and furthermore have judged God to be immoral. As for forgiveness of sins, the branch of Christianity that I used to belong to claimed that salvation/eternal life was forever and cannot be lost, and that any who have accepted Christ as their savior have this. According to their teachings I must therefore still have salvation/eternal life/forgiveness, since at one time I did truly believe, and since they say that status cannot be lost.

Take the anti-derivative of distance with respect to something. The derivative of that with respect to the same something, will be distance. At the moment I can't think of any that might be useful though. There are a few things that you could consider distance to be. For example if you use the Plank wavelength, then the wavelength of something (which is a distance) will tell you about the momentum of a particle.

Unless he was just lying...

zapatos, you seem to be grossly overestimating the effects of emigration. Suppose for example that Alice and Bob leave Bishop Rock and then have 20 kids. You seem to want to count this as the population of Bishop Rock being reduced by 22: 2 from emigration and 20 from potential procreation. If each of their kids also has 20 kids then I'm sure you'd say the population was reduced by 400 more. In case you're wondering, Bishop Rock is a tiny island with little more than a lighthouse. It used to have someone living there but now it is fully automated. It simply can't have that many people living there, and that is the point... the children of people who are no longer here are irrelevant. It doesn't even matter how many children people would have on average here. No, what matters is the population growth rate, which is [math]r = \frac{births - deaths + immigration - emigration}{population \cdot time}[/math]. Multiply r by population and you get your population growth rate per unit time. Reduce population by 1, and the effect on population growth rate is non-existent, it simply reduces the population by 1 as if it were an earlier time without affecting the rate. Reduce the population by 1 per unit time, and that does affect the growth rate. To count the effect you have to compare to the overall effects in the equation. And never will the effect be any greater than if the person had died. In fact, the effect of death would be greater than that of emigration because dead people cannot emigrate back.

Right, you only said it could have a "big impact" on future population, not that it could be a form of population control. From the sounds of it you seem to think that if African Americans have 100 million kids in the US that should somehow count as reducing the population of Africa by 100 million more. Population doesn't work like that -- having kids or not is not something that is decided by fate and that the only thing we can control is where it happens. No, if people leave a region then that region's population is reduced, and if people in a region have a child, then that region's population is increased, but that doesn't further reduce the population of their region of origin. Space colonization will almost by necessity require special effort to have a lot of children per colonist, which they most certainly would not have had if they had stayed here on earth.

My thoughts exactly. We're just sitting here waiting for nature or mankind to wipe us out, killing each other over minor squabbles when we should be conquering our solar system and raising our civilization to the next level.

Electromagnetic potential energy is also usually considered negative (because it is so much easier to start off at infinity than at some unknown minimum distance). However only gravity is significant at such large scales.

I'm not familiar with Batman clothing, but in theory you could make something flexible that could become rigid and stay that way with very little energy. We do have some materials that can flex or contract when electricity is applied, in which case it is energy and not voltage that would be required to move against resistance. Having it as clothing is probably pushing it though, unless you don't mind it being either very weak or very heavy.

Thanks everyone. I'll check out your mechanical pencils if I can find them, and I really should try a fountain pen sometime. Oooh, shiny! It would cost half what my computer cost, but it might be worth it. I'd really like to try it out first though. Of course it counts. I can't stand the screeching sound of chalk on the board, but it would be nice to have a large board to write on. I'd probably get a giant whiteboard if I had room for it.

Sure, but the important thing to remember is that the velocity component could be largely horizontal right from the start, so a shallow angle. For example if you can get a plane traveling at 100 mph (44.7 m/s) and 5 m altitude, the downwards component of velocity would only be 9.9 m/s. That would be 12 degrees from horizontal, which is a fairly reasonable slope to be able to find. On such a slope, the stopping distance could be very long... so long as they don't sink into the snow. Even without a slope, falling at that angle would mean that 1 m of snow depth would be 4.6 m at the 12 degree angle.

More than that, many (probably most) religious people base their morality off of their religion. Asking such people to discuss morality without religion would be rather like asking people to discuss physics without math. It would be one thing to make specific threads where you ask for opinions from only the secular humanism viewpoint (or some other specific moral system), it would be quite another to try to keep religion out of the entire ethics forums. It would take huge amounts of moderator time (because people are unlikely to read the rule and unlikely to follow it if they do), and lots of people would hate us for it. So I think it would be best to do that at a per-thread level.

My Dad told me long ago about Soviet soldiers jumping off an airplane without a parachute onto snow. Now I wonder whether it is true or not. This website collected some accounts of the supposed jumps, and concludes they are probably propaganda or exaggerations. It also examines some physics, but I don't think it's a very good analysis. They seem to be calculating using the maximum velocity but calculating as though the fall angle were straight down. So here is my proposed scenario: an airplane with a stall speed of either 40 mph or 100 mph. Snow 1 m deep, no more, with a reasonable density and compressibility. Suitable but reasonably possible terrain. Can the jump be done with greater than 50% chance of coming out unhurt (or alternately, alive)? My analysis: let the airplane speed be V, and the minimum fly height h. Then the total velocity of the fall (assuming negligible air resistance) is [math]v = \sqrt{2 g h + V^2}[/math], of which the vertical component is [math]v_{vert} = \sqrt{2 g h}[/math] and the horizontal component V. So long as the plane's speed is high and the height low, even a small slope could match the angle of the fall. So, find a slope matching the angle of the fall (same as the ratio of the appropriate velocities). Ideally you want a gentle slope: it will be harder to miss that way, but on the other hand it means that you're moving faster. By matching the angle of the fall with the angle of the slope, you get effectively infinite "depth" of snow, and furthermore that is on the surface. My thinking is that if you can match the angle of fall and slope you get an effect similar to skipping a rock on water, so that our soldier never hits hard ground nor is even buried in snow, and furthermore is only about half-way into the snow and so afforded a gentler deceleration. As for position I would suggest a position feet-first and face up, with the feet tilted so that they form a nice angle, so that your feet end up above the snow and therefore the rest of the body ends up at an angle, preventing the body from sinking into the snow. However, I'm not really sure how to calculate this, since I've never done a "moving through a solid material" physics problem, and more so since this would be at the surface.

Just wondering, what are people's favorite writing implements? Do you prefer pen or pencil, or perhaps prefer to type? Certainly some are better than others, do you have a preference for one type or or even a particular model? I do quite a bit of both writing on paper and typing, and so I'm wondering if I could get a better implement. For some reason when I go to Walmart I'm always drawn to the lane with all the pens and pencils -- despite the fact that for the most part I hate shopping. My favorites: I like 0.5 mm mechanical pencils, and especially the ones that are largely metal. The two models I liked best were the Zebra M-301 and the Papermate G-Force. The G-force has a retractable tip, which is nice since the .5 mm leads can be so sharp, and a rubber grip, and I like it's clip better, but the rubber grip has partially worn away in about a year. For some reason I rather would like my mechanical pencils to be indestructible. Pens I hardly ever use. I make a lot of mistakes and like my mechanical pencils. Pretty much any pen is fine with me because I'd only ever use it if there's something I need to use a pen for. Keyboards... I remember using one of the old Model M keyboards in my Dad's office a long time ago. I like keyboards that are like that. The "ergonomic" keyboards are obnoxious. On the other hand, I also remember seeing an Apple keyboard with USB slots in the keyboard itself. Not only is this convenient, but I got a USB mouse and its tail doesn't reach my computer very well. And extra function keys are nice, so I adjust the volume easily or have a lot of empty keys to assign to macros. And some keyboards have glowing keys, which is nice for midnight gaming (since it is dark and my hands are off the home row), but that isn't a particularly important attribute. Does anyone know a keyboard that is like a combination of all of this? That would be my dream keyboard, and I need to get myself a new keyboard soon anyways.

It is close to something I suggested too. My suggestion is that the tax could be: (Income - Deductions)*(Flat Tax Rate) And if your deductions are more than your income then the tax is negative, so you get money. And for every dollar you earn, you always get (1 - Flat Tax Rate) extra dollars, no matter how rich or poor you are. However this will in no way guarantee that people would have the amount of money suggested that they should have by the deductions, but to prevent poverty it would work so long as (Deductions)*(Flat Tax Rate) > (Poverty Income Level). The income for the government would be (Gov. Income) = [(Average Income) - (Average Deduction)]*(Flat Tax Rate). In my opinion however, the fairest tax system is a progressive tax system. Consider the sayings, "It takes money to make money" and "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer". Consider this thought experiment: Bob inherits 1 billion dollars from his dad. Bob is totally lazy, but isn't extravagant. Bob's friend Alex knows all about investment, so that Alex can invest money and get a return significantly larger than inflation, and given enough money can distribute the risk so that it is statistically insignificant. So Bob hires Alex to invest his money, with the understanding that Alex gets a percentage of the money earned over and above inflation, and Bob gets the rest. Since Bob is not extravagant, he doesn't spend more than he "earns" via this process. This means that Bob gets risk-free income by doing nothing more than having money and hiring someone to invest his money. Furthermore, Bob's amount of money and therefore his income increases, so that he can live his whole life without lifting a finger and end up richer for it. When Bob dies he leaves even more money than he started with to his son, and the cycle continues. Now the above thought experiment is an exaggeration, but not so much that it would be implausible. But even when things are not taken to the extreme, people certainly do benefit economically from having more money, in various different ways from being able to buy things with huge down payments instead of payment plan, being able to start their own (not so small) business, investments, etc. -- benefits they gain simply from having money rather than from who they are as a person. Is this fair? I think not. And the only way to fix this would be to have a wealth tax, though a progressive income tax would more or less work and be easier to implement. Thus, to be fair by this measure, the tax rate has to be progressive and this must be exactly by how much easier it is to earn/save money when you have more money. Any more progressive and it is unfair to the rich, and any less progressive and it is unfair to the poor.

That makes as much sense as saying if "Rape Laws" WERE effective, logically there should be no sexual harassment in Countries with strong, enforced law. Not only are some homicides not done with guns, but laws do not have to be 100% effective to be useful, strong, nor enforced. It is enough that the law reduces the target activities enough so to overcome the social and economic costs of enforcement.

I don't think we have any psychics here. What are your questions?

We could start a thread on the ethics of trying to stop people from discussing things you don't like.

Ethics should never be thrown out, but should always account for all possibilities. If not, your ethics system needs adjusting. I can see where if we approve of extermination attempts it would seem questionable to demand ethics review for using that very species as experimental test subjects.

lemur, to be honest I too have great difficulty reading some of your posts. About economic well-being and freedom: people deprived of certain freedoms could quickly lose their economic well-being at the whim of another person. If they do not trust the person or institution largely responsible for their economic well-being, they would value the freedom more since then they can be responsible for their economic well-being. But I agree that well-off people are probably going to be content with their leader even without freedom. About food security: the climate of Egypt does not preclude self-sufficiency for food, and food self-sufficiency is extremely important to countries from a national security standpoint. Egypt used to be largely self-sufficient in the 1960's but not in 1980's. This is for specific staple foods, and I don't know how it applies to food overall. As one of the countries giving food aid to them, I suppose this food shortage of theirs was probably a political/diplomatic advantage for the USA. http://countrystudies.us/egypt/84.htm

On some things the Bible might be the only source that talks about a certain event, so there might be nothing to contradict nor support the event. Most people would assume that uninteresting events recounted in the Bible are probably more or less accurate, since random lying really isn't very beneficial. For miraculous things one might require much higher standards of evidence (since we don't see proper miracles nowadays), and for things that make the Israelites look good one might question the the motivations (potential for bias and nationalistic exaggeration). But anyone trusting any one source is a fool. Like with any other source, sometimes other sources talk about the same events directly or indirectly, and then you can compare agreement among the various sources (which might be writings or actual remains).

The way I always thought of the Devil's reasons for wanting us to end up in hell was that it was simply part of his hatred against God. How can you possibly hurt an omnipotent entity? Part of loving someone is that you hurt when they hurt, and so you can hurt someone who loves someone else by hurting that someone else. And so the only way the Devil can hurt God is via hurting us. However, I'm not sure how accurate that description would be. That's just a guess at the Devil's motivations, and from reading the book of Job, God and the Devil seem to get along pretty well, like they're old buddies with a difference of opinion. As for the "power" of souls, I've never seen any indication that souls have any power whatsoever, much less that this power could be harnessed in any way. Except of course in fiction.

Depends on whether you consider a potentially huge number of reflections and refractions an odd optical effect.

Good question. I've seen a study that you're better off being robbed by someone with a gun than by someone with a knife. Why? Knives can kill just fine... but the victim is more likely to try to defend themselves and get away since it's "only" a knife, and on the other hand the perpetrator is more nervous and more likely to react. Also, using a gun means they attract attention so they really don't want to do it. But what if the victim also has a gun? They might try to use it, and odds are they are the ones going to die rather than the criminal, given who has the element of surprise and probably the more training. I do think people have a right to defend themselves, but quite frequently trying to exercise that right is much more dangerous than not. I disagree. Criminals killed by the judicial system have already don the harm in question. Criminals killed in self-defense, or by law enforcement to save someone, can be prevented from committing their crime. Thus, for example, I might not think the death penalty would be justified to punish rape, but I wouldn't think twice about killing someone if it would prevent a rape.

Easy, just find a way to break the First Law of Thermodynamics.

Only 3? As for the petition, what's this about funding for a specific result (observational contradictions of the BB), or the suggestion that peer review should be done only by non-experts in the field? How about you convince the experts, if you have a better theory?