I_Pwn_Crackpots

I dare anybody to try and disprove the fact that 0.9999999..... repeating doesn't equal 1. In particular, read some of the proofs on this website here: http://www.qntm.org/?pointnine Good luck

Of course I know all that. But only if you were taken to a hospital, or weren't living in Haiti where health care is certainly substandard and just about anybody can become a doctor. You know nothing about how third world countries operate Regardless, the whole point I was trying to make is that not all religions out there are ad hoc hypothesis that someone just pulls out of their ass.

The definitions of hypothesis and theory in a scientific context have very clear, disambiguous meanings. It is not really subject to debate. There is no confusion among the scientifically literate about what constitues a theory. I think what is going on is that you are just simply not understanding that most of science isn't opinion. Aristotle was wrong on quite a bit of things, so I have no reason to follow any of his advice on scientific matters.

Wait, that's a false dilemma. Since when exactly did neutrality mean that it doesn't exclude anything. And since when did atheism become not neutral, all atheism means is lack of belief in a deity. And/or not acknowledging the existence of one, which is exactly what science does. In that since it is atheistic (albeit very weakly so...). I understand that there are some assholes out there who like to think otherwise, but there really is nothing in science that prevents you from continuing to have faith in one. Spoken like a true theist. To the complete exclusion of all other faiths . No belief in deity doesn't necessarily mean that they think material causes are the only ones, only philosophical materialists do that. 1) I'm pretty certain he was. Hence the phrase "created in his own image" in the Genesis. While arguable, he was regardless stated to have intervened numerous times throughout Earth's history, and even to have lived on it for a time... 2) Not directly anyway, but you can certainly test for his so-called "interventions". I'm pretty certain that turning of the Red Sea into blood would have a noticable effect on the geology and ecosystem of the region, to name an example... No it wasn't. Ideas about evolution and/or origin of various species have been around since the time of the Greeks. Until the mid to late nineteenth century it remained in the realm of philosophy. The Greeks (in particular Aristotle)held that there was no evolution, that all the animals were "fixed". They were not clear on how they actually came into existence, and some went as far as saying they always have existed for all eternity. Ideas about evolution, ironically, were not influenced by theism but by pantheism and paganism, in recent modern times. The Romantic scientists at the time held that there was an ideal plant, an "ideal" mammal, etc etc, that all species try to obtain, but failed just short of doing so. That is, they all tried to evolve to the ideal form.... And this has been around for a LONG time, since the early 1600-1700's. All the theists did was hijack them and introduced their own biases into those ideas, and claimed somehow God was responsible for it all (they, of course, were smart enough to not specify how it was done). All religions do this. The reason they continue to have gaps is simply because ideas about deities and how they operated were created in man's own flawed image. However, some religions are smart enough not to claim perfection (and some openly acknowledge that their gods are not perfect), unlike Christianity. I understand that you take that personally, but until the Abrahamic religions are able to admit that their deity is not perfect and modify it to acknowledge that, they will continue to bear the brunt of all the criticism.... Simulated or not, doctors can't tell the difference

Hey! Not all of voodoo is a complete crock. Have you not heard of Clairvius Narcisse, the man who was raised from the dead... It is certainly much more testable than Yahweh...

I have a friend who lives in France, and he says that under their system you are paying for somebody to be a couch potato.

Ok, I'll give you that one. They didn't use industrial waste back then. Neither were there the wastes of tens to hundreds of millions of people to deal with. There's quite a bit more waste in sewage now than just human and animal. I'm not surprised they would be self cleaning, there were no dedicated water treatment plants back then either, it all just went down stream. The Romans didn't even bother putting that underground, it just went parallel with the local roads until it found a stream or a pit. I can only imagine the types of diseases that they had to endure, since there was no sanitation either. Sure, the elite (where you get most of our written accounts from) might have had the best the ancient world had to offer and had pretty decent health and sanitation, but everybody else was certainly in bad shape, especially during the Middle Ages. It has 4 sides (5 if you count the bottom). But so what? Take a look at the interior It's hardly more than a pile of rocks. The Aztecs and the Mayans could do a much better job. If you paid any attention, they were never destroyed. Thousands of tons of ancient rocks were moved successfully without so much as a scratch. So I don't know why you brought this up, since this proves that modern methods do pwn ancient methods. The fact that the alignment was wrong is besides the point. This was probably due more to sloppiness than as a deliberate action, since they were only worried about saving the structures. In ancient times, a margin of error would have made the entire structure useless or worse, collapse on itself; that's why they stuck with using very simple and very conservative principles. And they didn't move whole structures at once. The best that the Romans could do was move Obelisks, while we can move old, rotting, and/or heavy structures without breaking them. They managed to move an old lighthouse in Cape Cod not too long ago. The only monuments that have survived were the ones that were built correctly, whether they were Pyramids or Medieval Castles. Which, by the way, shows that you don't have to have great engineering skills in order to produce something that can survive, because the Medieval engineers were worse than their Roman counterparts. Only the ones that happened to be built correctly will give the impression that the methods used were "accurate". Now, how many failures do you think were made? Take a look at the Pyramids themselves, you'll notice that there were a bunch of rounded ones before they made the perfect Great ones. Or Stonehenge, there are stones scattered all over the place built much earlier. Now how many different imperfect "prototypes" of CN Towers or Space Needles were there, before we built the "right" one. How many slaves do you think died while building those "advanced structures"; building the Great Wall took a toll on more than 2 million lives. Millions of slaves died building Rome's metropolises, and tens of thousands died building the Colosseum alone. Compare those figures to the number of people who died building Fenway Park, or the Empire State Building. Or compare those figures to the number of people dying building the mega-cities of China and the U.A.E. today (sure, their conditions aren't as good as they should be, but they are certainly much better off than the slaves that built the puny Greek and Roman cities, or the ones that jump started the American economy 300 yrs ago). How many oddly shaped building like this one were around in ancient times? Or how about bridges like this one. Until you get into at least the Middle Ages, there's not a whole lot of structures that stray from a conservative design. So, please tell me again on how much more "superior" their engineering skills were to modern ones? Please, I would love to hear some more, it's very entertaining Nope. No, I did not assume that. How ironic . We get all of these misconceptions that the ancient engineers were all that great because of Hollywood. I have shown everybody here that they were completely overrated and nowhere near as great as modern achievements. Dependence on slaves was much greater than you could have possibly imagined. Much of what they did would have been impossible without the use of slaves, and the use of slave labor did not really start decreasing until we starting building mechanical machines like wind mills toward the early Middle Ages, and this happened only in Europe and China. Their dependence on slave labor is never really mentioned much because we don't like to admit that as humans, we were hardly more than amoral savages. And they are still used today in third world countries. We like to romanticize the Romans, the ancient Chinese, the Greeks, etc. But they were a brutal and ruthless people. Much of what they did was not possible without exploitation, simply because they didn't have the technology or the scientific and mathematical knowledge necessary to do all that much without it. Not that it bothered them back them, because according to them, the slaves were an inferior people. That is true, and a good point. This underscores the fact that they had to make up for their lack of technology by superior physical training. However, I should note that Roman triremes did not survive for more than a few months because of the physical strain put on them and disease... Which means that they probably weren't necessarily superior, but were forced to push themselves over the edge. We have, the earliest use of domestic animals dates back to about 10,000 B.C.. But using animals for labor as opposed to humans presents it's own logistical problems, large animals in particular require lots of food. And you can't necessarily whip them in order to force compliance, you have to train them from a young age, or tame them (which also takes time). So their use was much more limited. On the other hand, it is trivial to find large numbers of criminals or war prisoners to enslave, and they didn't have to worry so much about their safety or their health, or their wages. Plus, they could do things much more delicately when it is needed, so they were a much more flexible resource than large animals.

But that is something, isn't it? Which negates the notion that nothingness exists. HA! I win!

Same reason we have faith in megamillion dollar computer models simulating economic change. They work within reason. Sure, something unexpected can happen, but how likely is it? Climate models have a far smaller margin of error than economic models, and work on completely different principles. WTF??? I see that you didn't read any of the links? Yes they are. If "the Earth's temperature will rise" is not a solid enough answer, then what is? You seem to be the kind of person who will only agree with things they want to hear, not necessarily the science itself. Well, its right there in those links. If you think your ruler and graph models are better than those from supercomputers, then lets see them. But it is quantified. And there really is no other way to make predictions unless you use a model. They are never going to be 100% accurate so I really don't know why you are objecting to their use. A question to the rest of you: is SL some sort of global warming denier???? He uses all of the classic arguments and fallacies of a typical GW denier. Because if he is, then I won't spend too much time on this thread. No use in trying to convince the deluded, my time is quite limited.

Depends on which source you look at. As far as I'm aware, the Egyptians knew that the ratio between the circumference and the radius was about 3, but they did not have the tools or the logic necessary to actually get the exact value. The first few digits were discovered by the Greeks. What???? Are you really that serious???? They were not at all superior to modern times, especially at the scale that we do things at. And you do really want our sewers to be self cleaning, a lot has changed in our waste since ancient times. Only 100,000 people? The Romans and the Chinese could supply water and food for over a million people living in their cities by late antiquity. But, even cities the size of 50K could never sustained if not for slave labor; if you have enough men and women forced to work for you, I'm pretty certain that you could do things on a large scale like build roads and metropolises, and maintain a relatively high standard of living for a select few. Nowadays, we can maintain cities containing up to tens of millions of people, without the use of slave labor. Modern methods completely pwn the ancients. I agree that their accomplishments were impressive given the times, but you also should keep in mind that what they could do demonstrated their limitations as well. It's not that big a feat to build a pile of rocks in the shape of a pyramid. They did not have machines, or steel, or electricity, or wind mills (not until medieval times), or mechanized farming, or any of that good stuff. They were totally dependent on slave labor, and even that had severe limitations. Engineering principles were quite undeveloped, and they just simply didn't have the philosophical and logical principles necessary to gain any significant scientific or mathematical knowledge. Which all makes the idea of alien visits completely questionable, if they have visited way back when and helped humans, why weren't humans building mega-cities 3000 years ago, or going into space, or utilizing advanced technology in general? Why did it take so long for us to compute the correct value of pi???

The Earth also attracts the sun toward it as well. As others have noted it's tangential velocity keeps them from crashing into each other.

I think a compass will work better.

So you do admit, then, that this is a feature that is rolled out in every society that has ever existed. Which contradicts your statement in that it really isn't a socialist concept. Ok, yes, socialists have redistribution of wealth as part of their backbone, but it isn't restricted to the left wing. But again, what exactly is wrong with redistribution of wealth? Or better yet, why should I let you keep everything to yourself and not contribute anything to society? The bottom line is that they are going to take your money, even if they have to pry it out of your dead hands. The only choice you have is where you want it to go: you want it to go to rich people, or do you want it to pay you back in some way, such as for example, health care or less taxes for the masses. Guilt by association is a very powerful tactic in politics. What matters is not the actual topics at hand, but how many voters and ideological sheep you can keep at your side. You hit it spot on, and I only wish that more people were much more rational.

Here's one from NASA: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/a99942.html The probability of impact is actually a bit lower than 1 in 45,000. In any case, it is not a civilization destroying asteroid, at most it might just cause a longer winter or destroy a city.

You can be "undecided" as your political alignment. And yes, during elections you can vote for whoever you want.