AL

They do not miss the point. You are stating that all these contingencies need to be in place or else things in the universe would not be what they are (i.e. they'd be something else). That's very profound. So if things had been different, they would be different. How does this imply Divine design? As I stated earlier, it would suggest Divine design only if you could show that alternate universes are demonstrably inferior; that, as Leibniz once said, we "live in the best of all possible worlds." If the latter were not the case, if other different universes were just as "good," then what role does your hypothetical Divine designer play if dumb chance can create a universe just as "good?" (Assuming of course, that the notion of "chance" can be applied to the universe as a whole in this way.) Divine teleology is neither demonstrable, nor testable. It offers minimal explanatory power, and absolutely no predictive or probative value. It is not science. I will grant you that my analogy was not scientific, but it is far from illogical and unfair. You seem to believe that by attaching a string of contingencies to some arbitrary goal in order to render it "unlikely" implies design to achieve that goal. I have demonstrated precisely where this kind of reasoning leads you. If you think it is unfair, then explain. Otherwise, your complaint of "oh well, you just can't do that" is a special plead. You make a distinction between a "simple" human life and a "highly complex" living being, but I would contend that a human life can be, just as Michael Behe argues, "specifiably complex." If we believe Hitler's purpose for being was to effect the Holocaust, then all of his life's activities constitute a very complex system, such that removal of one of its parts may cause the end result (the Holocaust) to fail to be. Can you see why Behe's reasoning is specious, let alone the science? "Complexity" to a large extent is an arbitrary notion. It can even be argued that complexity in design is a sign of inefficiency and poor planning. Many IDers point out that the immune system is "complex" and must therefore be designed for the purpose of protecting the human species from pathogens and harmful microbes. But wouldn't it be more efficient for a designer to do away with the immune system AND harmful microbes? It's a bit like building a car with a self-destruct device and an anti-self-destruct device, or if I were Mark Twain, it'd be like making flies to consume garbage, and making garbage for flies to consume. Evolution, and not ID, fits the inefficiency and poor planning observation quite nicely. Evolution is an inefficient, unintelligent, and non-goal-oriented process.

We, as human designers, design things within the bounds of natural law to effect our ends. It is rather dubious to turn this around and say that things in nature mesh so well with natural law that they must in turn be designed for some end. What end is being effected by the Designer? To have natural systems strive toward equilibrium? That's a decidedly unintelligent goal.

Many of his concepts have saturated our popular culture, though whether for better or worse, you decide. Things like "Freudian slip," "penis envy," "sublimation," "Oedipal complex," etc. are still mentioned in pop culture even though Freud was allegedly debunked for using poor, biased samples in his studies.

There's nothing more. The total area of all shapes is 32 squares when counted individually. The total area is 32.5 for the whole "triangle" if you use the formula 1/2*(base)*(height). But as has already been pointed out, the total "triangle" is not a triangle. It has a bent "hypotenuse," so you cannot use the latter formula. The correct area is 32 squares.

Well this is certainly news to me. What exactly was Godel's error? And I do hope you realize that set theory itself is incomplete? It wouldn't help your cause at all to use a "set theoretic analysis" to then refute Godel. This objection seems self-refuting to me. If there is a "higher level system" or all-encompassing axiomatic system which covers all of mathematics, it would presumably allow for the construction of the natural numbers, or at least a concept of counting. If such were the case, Godel's theorem would apply to it.

That's not really what I mean by values. I'm referring specifically to normative values, such as "the water in the pool is cold, so we should not jump in," rather than quantitative values such as "the water in the pool is cold -- it's 5 degrees C." The latter is a descriptive statement, the former is what I mean by a value statement. Normativism as opposed to positivism, which is the crux of the issue here. Does evolution support human eugenics? No, evolution is a description. It's up to you how to interpret those descriptions, but your normative interpretation as to what we ought to do in response to the information is not science. It's more a form of ethics really. Well as I said earlier, teleology may have a place in science, but one must tread carefully. Certainly if a new creature evolves wings, it may want to try and find a use for it, so in that sense, there is a goal for that creature's behavior. I said earlier that teleology has a place in behavioral sciences. But that is markedly different from saying a bird evolved wings for the purpose of flying -- that's a serious misapplication of teleology. Unless you can prove that nature can think the way humans and some animals can, it is not reasonable to assume nature has a goal in mind when evolving creatures. Anyway, this teleology discussion appears to be off-topic or else I seemed to have lost sight of what this has to do with this thread and justifying eugenics with evolution so this is my last post on the matter. If you really want to say something further, you can pm me.

What do you mean? I assume by "composing ideas" you mean the field axioms of C, but in this case, the definition of i does not contradict any true statement in C. Can you clarify please?

Mr. Escultura "refuted" trichotomy using the ol' "1 does not equal 0.999..." argument, which we've seen beaten to death here and elsewhere. He argued that it can be both proven that 0.9_ = 1 and 0.9_ < 1, and so trichotomy fails. http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2004/jun/18/yehey/opinion/20040618opi7.html Needless to say, I'm skeptical, but I'll await further information to see if this gets published in math journals and not merely in a newspaper that Mr. Escultura himself works for.

I've never been there, but I heard that in the bathrooms of his dinoland, he actually has laminated Jack Chick tracts suspended by chains from the ceiling over every toilet, so when kids are on the potty, they can read doomsday propaganda.

That sounds like the definition of summation. Well, either that or tetany. I always get the two confused. I don't have a physiology textbook anymore, but I'm pretty sure it's one of those two.

Probabilities are a way for us to model our own uncertainty, but the actual behavior of the thing being modeled may not be random or probabilistic at all. For instance, coin tosses are often regarded as random with 50/50 odds. But is the behavior of a coin truly random? You can write equations of physics which describe the behavior of the flipped coin to the letter (granting any assumptions the equations make), so it really isn't random at all. Likewise, there are rules/equations which describe organic chemical reactions exactly. Proteins will form a certain way under certain conditions; if this were not the case and protein formation were truly random, we would not exist as our bodies would be cranking out random proteins. There may be some uncertainty that we would have to model with probability, but this stems from our own inability as observers to account for all possible factors that affect the reaction, not from the reaction itself being random in any sense of that term.

What I wanted to know was specifically what type of energy the water is using to perform work on the pipe. When something gets colder, it simply transfers its thermal energy into its surroundings, so when the water freezes, the work being performed by the thermal energy is used to "heat" the molecules of its surroundings. Clearly, this is not what causes the pipe to burst. What's causing it to burst appears to be the mechanical force of expanding water pushing on the pipe. How does this work though? Does the thermal energy transform into mechanical energy? But how can it do that while simultaneously spreading heat to neighboring molecules? I suspect it has something to do with the energy in water's hydrogen bonds, but I don't see how that would work out. I've already asked a physics professor and a chemistry professor, and they're both stumped on this one.

Sorry to bump an old thread, but I don't find any of these explanations to be very satisfactory and I've been wondering about this for some time now (and I'm dying for closure on it!). Anyone else want to take a stab at the question of what type of energy freezing water is using to perform work (in this particular case, displacing a pipe by bursting through it?) What you say is true, there is an input of energy somewhere in the system, but this only tells us that this phenomenon doesn't violate the second law of thermodynamics. It doesn't tell us what type of energy is being used by the water molecules themselves -- the water is losing thermal energy and there appears to be no input of energy of any kind into the water. Are you claiming that the dissipated thermal energy is what is being used to break the pipe? Thermal energy is one of the most useless forms of energy in terms of performing work so I find this highly doubtful. Perhaps it has something to do with chemical energy of water's hydrogen bonds? But I don't see how that would work.

My favorite game company has taken time out of its development schedule to solve this mathematical conundrum once and for all: http://www.blizzard.com/press/040401.shtml Is there anything Blizzard can't do?

What is the proper way to raise a child? I don't view child-raising as an exact, quantitative science. I view it as an art, and there's more than one way to do it right. Some parents believe in spanking, others regard it as abuse. Whatever works for you, do it. Children have varied personalities that it'd probably be impossible to apply a single one-size-fits-all formula for parenting. Some kids are easy-going and others require nothing short of boot camp to put them in their place. Also, my parents never taught me anything about puberty, yet I didn't freak out or become confused when it happened. My parents are very much conservative when it comes to sex, so I suspect they avoided the topic of sexual development because they felt awkward about it. Had my parents been homosexual, maybe they would've been less uptight enough to actually talk to me about these things.

How so? By frequently interrupting him to bring up irrelevant material? I saw the segment with Newdow last week and it was the second time I've seen him on the show. Every time he's on the show, he tries to discuss constitutionality which is at the heart of his case, but Hannity keeps interrupting him with red herrings such as what's in the Declaration of Independence (irrelevant) and mentioning that our nations' founders were mostly Christian (also irrelevant). I'm hearing that the inaugural chaplains are paid for by private money. If this is the case, then I disagree with Newdow on this case. All Hannity had to do really was say this on his show, that activities funded by private money do not violate the First Amendment. Instead, he kept bringing up the nonsense I mentioned above.

The phrase "separation of church and state" is not in the Constitution. The Constitution says Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, nor to impede the free exercise thereof. Thomas Jefferson was asked by a church what precisely this meant, and in a letter, he described it as government being neutral with regard to religion and that there is a "wall of separation between church and state." The popularity of the phrase "separation of church and state" is due to the fact that the SCOTUS has used it in several rulings dealing with the first amendment's stance on religion.

Newdow is not seeking monetary damages. --------------- As far as the pledge goes, I think Newdow had a reasonable case there. The Constitution says Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion. The phrase "under God" was inserted into the pledge by an Act of Congress signed into law by Eisenhower in 1954 after a religious red scare campaign to differentiate our great nation from the "godless" Soviets. This is clearly a violation of the Constitution if I ever saw one. I suspect the SCOTUS would have to agree if they hadn't thrown his case out on a technicality. Even Scalia, arguably the most religious justice, is a strict Constitutional textualist; he'd have an incredibly hard time upholding "under God" and I suspect this is the reason for his self-imposed recusal from the case (mixed loyalties to his religion and to his Constitution). Newdow probably has less of a case with regard to removing chaplains from a presidential inauguration. Especially if said chaplains are paid for by private contributions and not tax dollars.

X-files? You mean the FBI's "Unusual Phenomena Listing?" http://foia.fbi.gov/unusual.htm It's not very extensive...but Majestic 12's in it!

What if there's no real distinction between the two? If I can control and manipulate physical objects with my mind, then surely I can manipulate another mind (a physical object) in a similar fashion, no?

It was raining pretty hard in California well before the earthquake and tsunami hit SE Asia. I drove from San Jose to Los Angeles in mid-December (I think around the 12th or so) and it was hailing most of the time on Highway I-5. It rarely hails in the California valleys. Of course, this doesn't negate the possibility that the tsunami may have exacerbated the recent inclement weather in CA, but it was already pretty stormy before.