Strange

Kudos for admitting that your crude caricatures and bigotry are based on your limited understanding. I think it is a shame that you are not willing to learn more about the world - you might find that the world and most people's beliefs are not as hateful as you seem to think.

So a straw man argument then. Thanks for confirming it. I have no idea who those people are. That is very sweet of you. I'm touched. Oh, careful. Remember: you are not a bigot because you are attacking the idea, not the people. Ah yes, the old "some of my best friends are black" argument. Haven't heard that since the '70s I think. Even then it was seen a classic cliche that bigots would come out with.

No one is coming to that conclusion, because it is wrong. Surely, you must know that you have the wrong answer (because it is physically impossible) therefore the only problem is for you to understand why you have got it wrong.

Well, that saves us having to point out that you are being a dishonest dick. So thanks for that. I think you should be completely honest: tell them you are a lying dick who needs help. Maybe they will want to "save" you.

That appears to be wrong: "The name Jesus used in the English New Testament comes from the Latin form of the Greek name Ἰησοῦς (Iēsous), a rendition of the Hebrew Yeshua (ישוע), related to the name Joshua.[1][2] The name is thus related to the Hebrew verb root √yšʿ "rescue, deliver" and one of its noun forms, yešuaʿ "deliverance".[3] There have been various proposals as to how the literal etymological meaning of the name should be translated, including YHWH saves, (is) salvation, (is) a saving-cry, (is) a cry-for-saving, (is) a cry-for-help, (is) my help.[4][5][6][7][8]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_(name)#Etymology I assume you mean "Egyptian"? As the only references to such a thing are places like the David Icke forum, I think we can assume it is nonsense. Unless you can provide a credible reference? As the Chapel wasn't built until more than 2,700 years after her death, that seems like a pretty mad idea. It sounds like it might be in Egypt: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/queen-nefertiti-tomb-egypt-king-tutankhamun-have-we-found-secret-lost-burial-a6942696.html

! Moderator Note I have started this thread as it was a major branch from a thread on irrational ideologies of the liberal left from here http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/98459-irrational-ideologies-of-the-left/ Apologies the software doesn't allow for a nice looking start to the new thread to be made because we cannot create duplicate posts imatfaal Citation needed. Or is this is some sort of straw man argument? It sounds as if you don't know much about Islam beyond some newspaper caricatures. There are, of course, Muslims who hold such views. But then there are Jews, Christians or atheists who hold similar reprehensible views. But I assume you have some data that shows Islam to be worse in this respect? Or is this just an opinion (that we can therefore ignore as having no value). Describing all members of a group in a way that could be considered negative, when clearly there are a range of views in that group sounds a lot like the definition of racism and bigotry. I'm sure there are plenty who do. There are also many Muslims who stand up for the rights of women and children. (But perhaps, like ISIS, you don't consider them to be Real Muslims? ) I find that hard to believe. I mean, if true, it is great that you live in such an enlightened part of the world. But, sadly, it isn't true everywhere. I have no idea who "Milo" is or what he has to say. Why can't you tell us what you think?

Mouseover: "I can't remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express."

Not me. But I thought about it because the OP was so content free as to be almost useless as the basis of a discussion. "Sport: who do you think should win?" "Science: good or bad?"

How about you tell us what you think about one of these issues?

A timeline of Earth's average temperature: http://xkcd.com/1732/

I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that there are some wise words in the Bible, even if you take out / dismiss the concept of god? That may well be true (I haven't read much of the NT). But I don't see what it has to do with "not an atheist or scientist".

The "turbulence" (by which I assume you mean the spatial variations in temperature across the sky) are exaggerated in any image you see. Otherwise it would be a uniform colour (or a straight line). The variations in temperature and from a perfect black body spectrum are, as swansont has pointed out, really, really minutely tiny.

1. Where was this "patent" filed? 2. When was this filed? And for bonus points: 3. How quickly was it rejected?

Although, it does seem to be what caused several careless (and in some cases deluded) people to get the wrong result previously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedford_Level_experiment

Can you explain what you think this diagram represents? I fail to see how it is relevant to the discussion. To support your pint, you might want to provide a link to where you got the image.

Quite

I wasn't necessarily thinking of evidence for a "god", specifically. Because, as you say, that is not a concept with well-defined testable attributes. It is certainly true for unicorns, say. (And I think the case could be made regarding certain versions of "god".) More here: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Absence_of_evidence

This comes down to the fact that (classical) probabilities are about quantifying our knowledge of the world, not something about the world itself. That appears not to be the case for probability in quantum theory, though. Although some interpretations disagree with that, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics#Quantum_information_theories

But, with no evidence being found (even after millennia) that possibility approaches zero.

Imagine the case where one team always wins and the other always loses. If you know that, then you can predict the result (and the odds are 1:0). However, if you don't know that (or, equivalently, pick the winner from a hat) then the chance of getting the right answer is 50%.

1.25 mm? inches? miles? light years? Refraction happens at all altitudes. Please show how this was calculated and what the result was. The temperature of the air relative to the water appears to be irrelevant. With this combination of sloppiness and apparent lack of basic knowledge of physics I am not surprised your "experiment" gets inaccurate results. Indeed. I imagine that the only way to maintain the necessary stability and level would be with some high quality gyroscopes and gimbals.

Well, as you get the wrong result, you have obviously missed something. Dismissing the suggestions made by people here won't help you identify your error. (It may not be a single error.)

Are women lighter than men? (And do you mean lighter in colour or lighter in weight?) But as the attractiveness of lighter or darker skin appears to be purely cultural (as others have noted) it is hard to see how it could be relevant. If there were some such correlation, then it could be that in cultures where paler women are considered more attractive then a proportion of women will attempt to make themselves appear paler. Ditto for darker skin.

So are you saying that we should give exactly the same weight to the possibility of leprechauns, all the variety of human gods, monsters under the bead, centaurs and invisible pink unicorns as we do to those things that have clear evidence supporting them? Or should we, perhaps, be willing to dismiss some of these as unlikely to exist? (Note that the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" trope is in many cases, including this one, a fallacy.)

I have two problems with this concept. One is that thought is not dependent on speech or language. (Not everyone thinks in words or by subvocalising as you you suggest. And people without speech do not seem to be limited in their ability to think.) Shared thought is enhanced by the use of language but gesture, images and other tools can get quite a long way as well. The other is that I don't understand what it can mean for "the evolution of thought" to precede the evolution of the brain. Thoughts happen in the brain and the range of possible thoughts are, presumably, determined by the capability of the brain. How could thoughts somehow "exceed" this capability, and how would that cause the brain to evolve? It sounds like a sort of mental Lamarckism.