kimmy

If you lean a stick against a wall, the stick is applying force to the wall. Possibly for hours, days, or even many many years. Does that mean the stick is generating infinite energy? No, Pliny, it does not. And as usual the problem here is that you just don't understand what you're talking about. You're expending energy by pressing against the wall-- contracting your muscles uses chemical energy, and generates heat. But you're not generating energy any more than the stick leaning against the wall is generating energy. And holding the ball at constant height is no different from a table holding a ball at constant height. Is the table burning energy? If a ball sits on a table for 100 years, does that mean that the table has generated an incalculable amount of energy during that time? No. Nope. yep nope yep If you put a brick between two magnets to keep them apart, is the brick generating energy? Nope. Your muscles are burning chemical energy while you're holding the magnets in place, but that energy isn't being added to the system of magnets. It's being lost as heat. It's not being added to the system of the magnets. -k

Doesn't quantum entanglement potentially carry information faster than the speed of light? -k

Clearly. We don't actually disagree about anything. Well, I feel a little bad for Stockwell because he didn't go around *asking* for people to vote for him because he was a big Jesus guy. Perry and Bachmann, on the other hand, that's exactly their pitch. Michele Bachmann is running around promoting herself as "a president who will pray", promising that her faith will be part of her decision making process, and declaring that "separation of church and state is a myth." She's flat out telling people that her faith is the reason they should vote for her ...but we're not allowed to talk about her faith? Perry... enough said. Cain and Romney are religious men but at least they act like grown-ups about it. Why should Christians get a free pass from discussion of their religious beliefs when they're the ones making their faith a centerpiece of their campaigns? And I'm not sure I agree that "believing you should treat others with respect and not be a bad person" is really a defining characteristic of the brand of Christendom that the evangelicals and Southern Baptists are selling these days. If the candidates were campaigning on the basis of their gayness... "Vote for me, I'm the gayest!" "No, I am clearly gayest!" "Support me, for I am gayer than either of my opponents!" I suspect you'd probably have something to say about it. Don't try and make it sound like it was just a slip of the tongue. From watching the speech it's clear that it wasn't an off the cuff remark. And he's said similar things before. He didn't just say something dumb, he made clear that he believes it in his heart. I think it's hilarious when American Christians try and play victim. -k

Quantum entanglement is the only actual anomaly you've identified so far. I think you've long since lost sight of your original point. You set out to provide an example of scientists suppressing the truth, but instead you provided an example of an old theory gradually being replaced over a span of a hundred years thanks to new technology, better measurements, and new observations. What of it? Are you saying you're not allowed to climb Mt Everest because somebody wants to help starving African kids? No? Then what's the issue? The fear that your freedom to climb that mountain is being taken away is irrational paranoia. I think the proposition that a church is better for your spirit than a spa is highly dubious. I think that reading a good book, fiction or non-fiction, is better for your spirit than reading about a tribe of scumbags rampaging around the desert committing acts of insane savagery and genocide upon everybody they meet. I think time spent enjoying physical activity, or sex, or relaxation, is better for your spirit than time spent sitting on a bench listening to some guy tell you about the aforementioned desert scumbags. And when I say spirit I mean mental health, emotional well-being, contentment, satisfaction, happiness, and fulfillment... not some magical energy that lives on after you die. This is all a straw-man, of course. The view that we are not magical spirit-beings does not discount individuality and does not render physical health the only or even primary concern. There could very well be a reason to fear... but whatever there is, there's going to be a rational explanation. When has something that went bump in the night ever *not* had a rational explanation? We've found rational explanations for every mystery we've faced, and that is a trend that will continue. Of course. Obey us and get eternal happiness. Disobey us, and suffer eternal torment. Liberated spirit-beings in their next life... not this one. You said "you've got to earn" your next life. So how do you do that? If you don't believe any of the step-by-step plans to earning your next life (plans laid out by Christians, Muslims, Hindus, or etc) then have you come up with your own plan to earn your next life? If ranchland is an inefficient use of resources, then the cost of meat will reflect that, and people will either pay or not, and the ranches will survive or not. You won't be able to decide on your own; the cumulative effect of large numbers of other people making their own decisions will determine the outcome. -k

The speed of light doesn't change for any observer. Its wavelenth/frequency change depending on the relative motion of the observers. Where do you think the anomaly is? LOL, no! Rather than answer the question directly (as Toadbrother did) I will inquire as to your underlying difficulty: why do you think your magnet sticking to your fridge is an example of a source of limitless energy? All it is is an example of a system where two opposing forces are in equilibrium. It's not generating *any* energy. Maybe you're thinking "but magnets never wear out! Gravity never wears out! I can move a wire through a magnetic field and get energy! I can drop an object and get energy. So magnets are a source of unlimited energy! Gravity is a source of unlimited energy!" But if that is what you're thinking, you'd be wrong. When you move a wire through a magnetic field, the energy doesn't come from the magnet. The energy comes from the motion of the wire. When you run your generator, you don't burn gas to power the magnets, you burn gas to move the wires through the field. When you drop an object, the energy didn't come from gravity. The energy came from the object's initial position relative to the source of gravity. When the object falls, it exchanges potential energy for kinetic energy. Can the same object fall twice? No, once it's on the floor, it stays there. But you could pick it up and drop it again! Well, then you're putting energy back into the system by doing Work to add potential energy to the object. So while I share your amazement at magnets-- f***ing magnets, how do they work?? --you have failed to demonstrate any sort of anomaly or violation of the law of conservation of energy or anything of the sort. And considering that concepts that are covered in grade 10 physics courses seem to be completely mysterious to you, perhaps you should forget Relativity (and the Expansion Theory!) for the time being and just try and get a handle on Newton. Baby steps, my friend. -k

Energy and force are not synonyms, Isaac Newton Jr. -k

They remain on the books in 8 states, including Maryland, which was the subject of the Torcaso vs Watkins case. While the Supreme Court held that barring Torcaso from working as a notary was a violation of the US constitution, the Maryland constitution was not changed (check out clauses 36 and 37) and remains there in black and white to remind us that judging people on their religious beliefs is a time honored tradition in America (and I'll save you and Dick the trouble of pointing out that the same is true in Canada.) The point is simply this: I consider it the height of hypocrisy when Christians-- who have literally institutionalized the practice of judging others based on their religious beliefs-- cry foul when people turn the lens on their own religious practices. I really object to Blueblood running in with the Politically Correct Shield of Justice and saying "hey no fair talking about the candidates' religion, religion is a personal and private affair." Like hell it is. They've turned it into a 5-ring Jesus Circus, but we're not allowed to question their beliefs? Newt goes on stage and expresses his disrespect for the morals of approximately 40 million Americans who don't believe in god, but we're not allowed to ask what kind of morals he gets from his god? No way. Screw that. -k

No doubt that these clauses would be overruled if anybody actually attempted to enforce them. However, their existence points out long-held and ongoing prejudice. Newt Gingrich asked during the debate last week: "how can you have judgment if you have no faith? And how can I trust you with power if you don't pray?" Well, if Newt feels obliged to distrust anybody who doesn't profess a religious beliefs, I don't see why his own religious beliefs, and religious beliefs of others, should be beyond question either. He did cast the first stone, as Christians would put it. Blueblood would have us believe that the religious ideas of the candidates should be beyond discussion because faith is a personal matter and all people have an equal right to hold office. But in practice, we know that's not true. In practice we know that a non-Christian is not going to become president. If faith were really not relevant, we would not see Rick Perry's proxies playing the Mormon card on his behalf. -k

Do yourself a favor and put down that Mark McCutcheon book for a while. Read about redshift. I'm just curious as to why you're so non-specific about them. If these "anomalies" are the basis of your objection to relativity, you must be able to articulate them. Copernicus and Kepler and Tycho didn't lie to the rubes on the street. They just didn't publish them in wildly popular books. The rubes on the street didn't really have access to the correspondence between the leading scientists of the day. They couldn't just go down to the magazine shop and buy an Astronomy Society Journal. I don't plan on climbing Mt Everest because it would be a highly inefficient use of my limited time and resources. What about you? As a liberated spirit-being with unlimited potential, you must be planning to climb Mt Everest any day now, right? What a bizarre rant. The notion that disbelief in an afterlife inevitably argues for for some sort of restricted code of behavior state interventionism is inane and disjointed. It should be pointed out, however, that every formalized belief in an afterlife (that I'm aware of, at least) imposes restrictions on your behavior in this current life; if you don't follow the rules in this life you don't get the big present after you die (or, as you put it, "you've got to earn it.") -k

Actually a number of states, including Texas, have constitutions that bar atheists from holding public office. -k

What?! "The Doppler effect tells us it isn't a constant"? What the hell are you talking about? I can't let that slide. Please expand on that idea. The collapse of the universe was a possibility, but it would only happen if there's sufficient mass to pull everything back to the center. But last I heard, they were only aware of a fraction of the mass required to "close" the universe, leaving the most likely outcome an eternal expansion and eventually entropy wins. What are these "all its anomalies" you keep talking about? By "anomalies" do you mean things that disagree with your "common sense"? Gravity is "just a theory" too, but we know that if you drop a brick it'll land on the floor 100% of the time. Relativity is "just a theory", but we know that time dilation is real just as surely as we know that bricks fall. You've got it wrong. Scientists of the day did explain it to the church, who were very interested in the theory because they were interested in accurate calendars. The church adopted the position that the heliocentric model was a useful predictive tool, but not theologically accurate. Scientists weren't hiding stuff. They shared it with the church and with various nobles who were their patrons. It was only when Galileo shared it with the rubes on the street that the excrement hit the air circulator. You were allowed to study things... you just weren't allowed to let the people know that the church was wrong. "Perpetrated the Copernican theory beyond its time"? The Copernican theory was ahead of its time. The reluctance of some scientists was in some measure adherence to an idea they assumed to be correct (the earth must be the center of the universe because the Old Testament says so) and partly because of incomplete information. If you sincerely believe this life is a prelude to a better one, why worry about your preservation at all? Why work? Why obtain money to pay for food or shelter? Why not just go starve to death so you can get to the main show? While I do take great care to preserve my life and my health, that's hardly all-consuming. I take great pleasure in enjoying life as much as I can, because I believe in my heart that these few decades are all I have. -k

As Bonam already addressed much of this, I will skip a lot of it. Ultimately, your only argument against time dilation is that it contradicts what your "common sense" tells you, and your response to all these experiments that prove it happens is ... "well, there must be something wrong with the experiments!" Has it ever occurred to you that your "common sense" doesn't really have any bearing on how things operate when they're traveling at near the speed of light? Have you ever actually sat down with a textbook and a pencil and paper and tried to walk through the thought experiment that illustrates why events that appear simultaneous in one frame of reference don't happen simultaneously when viewed from a different frame of reference? Have you made any real attempt to understand any of this, or do you just sit there and say "that can't be true because it disagrees with my common sense" and flail around for some way of dismissing it to spare yourself the mental discomfort of dealing with a universe that contains things that are bigger and broader than you experience when you're driving your car to work? Don't look now, but... Dutch researchers solve the "speedy neutrino problem". And you're going to love the explanation: The CERN scientists used GPS satellites to synchronize the time at the sending station and receiving station. But since the satellites are moving 9000 miles per hour relative to the earth, the time sync signal at the receiving station came from a frame of reference where time is moving more slowly than in the scientists frame of reference. Due to time dilation in the satellite frame of reference, the GPS told the scientists at the receiving station that the trip took less time than it actually had. (common-sense analogy: my Malibu can do a 12-second quarter-mile... if you time it on a stop-watch that's running slow.) Nope. It might not be explainable under current theories, but it does nothing to help your arguments against time dilation. Actually, I'm thinking your inability to accept that there's no single absolute time reference is a lot like the church's refusal to accept a heliocentric solar system. You'd like to imagine you're forward-looking, but your "open-mindedness" is actually just a result of your willingness to jump on any possible theory that lets you cling to your Flat-Earth-like opinion that time couldn't possibly be relative. It's not actually open-mindedness at all, it's the desperation of denial. It wasn't the scientific community that opposed Galileo, it was the church. The scientific community was already aware that a geocentric universe didn't explain observations about the movement of the planets as far back as the time of the ancient Greeks. The scientific community had already seen evidence by astronomers-- Kelper, Tycho-- showing that other planets must orbit the sun. The scientific community saw the heliocentric model by Copernicus. The science and astronomy communities were discussing heliocentric models of the solar system for a hundred years before Galileo got arrested. In short, it wasn't the scientific community that considered Galileo's views radical. He was confirming stuff that astronomers and mathematicians had been talking about for a long time. It wasn't until Galileo published a best-seller that contradicted the church view that he got arrested. It wasn't the scientists who arrested Galileo. It wasn't scientists who made him recant. It wasn't scientists who banned his book. I'm quite baffled by all of this. It seems as if you're arguing that life doesn't have any meaning unless you can find some way to convince yourself to believe in fairy-tales. I find that to be quite sad. And that's just nonsense. The belief that there's a natural explanation for everything does not in any way imply that we know everything or discount the possibility of new and unexplained experiences. My plans for myself certainly don't involve doing anything after I'm dead. And anybody who puts off making the most of their few decades on earth because they're expecting bigger things after they die is, in my opinion, making the biggest possible mistake. This is just inane. The believe in a natural explanation for everything doesn't in any way discount anything you experience. The truth is a grand and wondrous thing. It doesn't suck at all. And the more you learn about our universe, the more you'll appreciate how amazing it really is. -k

If the choices are either support the status quo or support the protestors, then I choose the protestors. I don't understand how anybody can look at the factors that created the "global economic meltdown" and the aftermath of the "global economic meltdown" and not have an immense resentment of Wall Street and the banks. Not only did they create the situation, they also profited from it immensely. What lesson did they learn? That they can do whatever they want, screw up in the grandest possible fashion, suffer no consequences for themselves or the shareholders, and suck hundreds of billions of dollars from the taxpayers to clean up their mistakes. That's not "free market capitalism", that's socialism. And it's the height of irony for people acting on behalf of the corporations to portray themselves as defenders of "free market capitalism". I think the best word to describe the politicians who are continuing to act on behalf of the banks is "sycophants". -k

Both clocks exist simultaneously when they are synchronized before the experiment. Both clocks exist simultaneously when they are compared after the experiment. And we find that one clock has seen the passage of more time than the other. I'm not sure if you're trying to avoid that fact, or just too dense to grasp it. A usual clock does not measure the rotation of the earth and the relative position of the sun, unless your idea of a usual clock is a sun dial. A usual clock is a mechanical or electronic process that occurs at a predictable rate. Whether it be the motion of a pendulum, the charging of a capacitor, or the vibration of a crystal, we measure time by observing a physical process that has a regular duration. We're not talking about time zones here. Duh. Synchronize the two clocks in Alberta. Move one to BC. Check them again. They're still synchronized. Why? Because the one clock's trip to BC was so slow relative to the speed of light that the v/c terms in the time dilation equations become so close to zero as to make time dilation unmeasurable for such a short trip. Yes, there's a time difference. Yes, the difference would be dependent on the difference in speed. No, you're not going to be able to dismiss this as a quirk of how atomic clocks work. You are arguing that ... duuuurrr maybe the physicists don't understand how clocks work. In an experiment that's been thoroughly scrutinized by the entire physics community and repeated several times since. You can read about the famous atomic clock airplane experiment here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele%E2%80%93Keating_experiment It is worth pointing out that they accounted for the rotation of the earth. They sent one plane east and one plane west. Due to the rotation of the earth, the clock on the eastbound plane is moving faster than the clock on the ground, and the clock on the westbound plane is moving slower than the clock on the ground. This allowed them to calculate the dilation due to both velocity and gravity, and found that (surprise!) time dilation due to velocity is what they predicted and the time dilation due to gravity is also what they predicted. Win for relativity, epic fail for flat-earthers. Another thing to point out is that the experiment has been repeated and verified with higher precision since the original. Time as a "dimension" is a kind of philosophical idea that's not important to the issue under discussion. What's important is this: the idea that there's a single absolute time reference that is equally valid from every frame of reference has been proven false. It's a conclusion you can't avoid once you accept the fact that the speed of light is the same from whatever frame of reference you observe it from. ...but you think the scientists doing the experiments must be doing it wrong, because the results disagree with your assumptions, right? Kind of like how the church knew better than Galileo? General Relativity addresses the "speed of gravity problem". The proposition that gravity isn't a projected force at all but rather a curvature of space caused by mass is a premise that even people who don't know anything about modern physics are aware of, so I'm sure you've probably heard of it. The curvature of space has been observed by the effects of stars on passing light, and observational evidence supports General Relativity very strongly. I don't know what would happen if the mass of the sun were to instantaneously vanish, and neither do you, and it's an event that in itself would defy the laws of physics so I doubt there would be a way to discuss it intelligently anyway. I can't discuss General Relativity because I simply don't know much about it. Neither do you. I'd think that Toadbrother, and maybe Bonam, have actually studied General Relativity, but I doubt anybody else here has read more than the odd article about it. Inane, and irrelevant. The longer lifespans of rapidly moving particles aren't measured by little clocks strapped to them, or a clock on the wall, they're measured by how far they travel in a particle accelerator. Newton's laws work fine for NASA because planets and objects in our solar system and anything that we put into space has a velocity relative to earth that is very slow compared to the speed of light. I said that Newton's laws cover *virtually* every real-world situation. They work fine for cars and baseballs and even rocket ships, but they don't cover things that astronomers are observing, and they don't cover things that physicists can make happen when they fire up their cyclotrons. A lot of alternate theories to modern physics have been presented over the years and simply been found lacking. And all these predictions can be tested. And if they're wrong, we figure out why. Some of the biggest scientific advances in history have resulted from experiments that produced results that were different from what were expected. (was the Michelson-Morley experiment a failure?) Stupid doesn't mean wrong. Stupid is a function of how you react to being wrong. I have no idea what you're trying to say. We're animals is a much more sensible conclusion than thinking we're somehow magically different from animals. I don't need some animal with a PhD to tell me that. You've decided otherwise because some other long-dead animal wrote some nonsensical book telling you so. So, to summarize... "nobody has ever managed to demonstrate mental telepathy, but I'm sure it's real!" I'm not going to say mental telepathy is impossible. What I am going to say is that if somebody can demonstrate that it actually exists, we'll be able to find an explanation of how it happens. If that involves some completely new field of science that doesn't even exist right now, so be it. Not sure if that was intentional or not, but that was laugh-out-loud funny. Yes, always plenty more lies coming for Christians. Not sure what you're trying to say. I need Jesus to tell me I'm not an animal, but since I don't believe in Jesus nothing can convince me otherwise? I think your magic book is one of the primary sources of widely-believed lies that have been exposed over the years. -k

Right now I think it's self-styled Rugged Free Market Individualists who argue that we need to subsidize mega-corporations to create jobs. -k

And we know that when each clock arrives at "now", the one that has been accelerated has observed the passage of less time than the one that has stayed in place. You seem to have a major conceptual problem with the idea that both clocks reach "now". You seem to be stuck on the idea that the clocks can't be observed simultaneously because one is 59 nanoseconds behind. That's not the case. Both clocks still get to the same point in time, but one of them has had more "ticks" along the way. The clock experiment is hardly the only proof of time dilation anyway. (if I recall, the idea of putting a clock on an airplane was supposed to investigate the effect of *gravity* on time rather than velocity...) There have been other proofs of this effect. One of them is that when particles with short lifespans are accelerated to high velocities, their lifespans (as observed by the physicists in the lab) become much longer. Particles that ordinarily decay in nanoseconds survive many times longer than they ought to, because time is passing at a different rate in their frame of reference than it is in the frame of reference of the physicists who are observing them. No more than any other object has a past, present, and future. Interesting, but so? What's the fundamental assumption that's wrong? Newton's laws of motions aren't correct either. They break down when the objects involved are moving at high speeds. As it turns out, Newton's equations of motion are a special case of a more general set of equations, that only work properly if v/c is very small. Was Newton wrong? Of course not. He was correct, but his equations were not complete, they were only applicable to specific cases (cases which cover virtually every real-world situation, of course.) Is Einstein wrong? There's too much empirical support for relativity for it to be flat out wrong. Is it complete? We don't know. Like Newton's laws, it might turn out to be just a piece of a much bigger puzzle. On the contrary. I'm stupider than a physics scientist, so I have gone out and read about this stuff to find out how it works. charter.rights was wrong in claiming that quantum mechanics proved the existence of either. As for asserting that both do exist, feel free to convince me. I've read lots of "proofs" of the existence of god, so I doubt you have anything new to offer on that front. I'm very interested to hear why you believe in mental telepathy, however. Yes. -k

Both clocks did, do, and will exist in the past, present, and future. Both clocks arrive at Now. One is 59 nanoseconds younger when it gets to now than the other. It's fairly absurd that you're attempting to present this nonsense with a straight face. But what's really absurd is that you're here positing yourself to be smarter than Albert Einstein and the many many scientists who have studied the theory of relativity in the past hundred years. I can tell you're a physics scientist... I'm sure you got your degree from either the Bob Jones University School of Young Earth Creation and Geocentric Astronomy, or the Pliny College of Pulling Stuff Out Of Your Ass. I can hardly wait. I'm sure it's going to be even better than the time charter.rights explained how Quantum Mechanics proved that God and Mental Telepathy are real. -k

I can't stop laughing... -k

A while back, the kooks of the Westboro Baptist Church set out to bring their message of hate to Long Beach California, and the result was exactly what you'd expect... ...a big gay dance party broke out. And just today, at a Westboro Baptist Church protest, the Foo Fighters, dressed in cornball disguises, arrived and performed, completely disrupting everything as both WBC members and counter-protesters alike stopped to enjoy the show. Looking at these videos, it occurred to me that the Phelps family are bringing people together and creating a sense of unity wherever they go. I'm not religious, but if I were, I would think that maybe the Westboro Baptist Church is doing god's work after all. -k

You've all missed the point. It is not that capitalism is bad. It is that people who eat at McDonalds are cultureless baboons, and in all likelihood Americans or American sympathizers. The point is, primarily, that Heather Mallick is better than you are. Other ways in which Heather Mallick is better than you: -she married a European -lives in Canada's most urbane and cosmopolitan locale -fake English accent -works in academia -supported by public funds; needn't sully herself with private enterprise or commerce -...except when attempting to sell books, of course. If you keep in mind the prime motivating force in Mallick's life-- her shame and self-loathing at having been born in a prairie hick town-- all of her writing can be readily put in its proper context. -k

That would be true if the concert were being held on a public street, but it wasn't. You don't have the right to walk into a university class and go to the podium and say whatever you feel like saying. You can say whatever you feel like saying, but you don't have the right to do so in that university lecture theatre. You don't have the right to go on stage at a U2 concert and start playing an accordion. You can play your accordion outside the arena, if you like, but that arena belongs to U2 for the duration of the performance and they're not in any way obligated to give you a venue to expose the audience to the wonders of polka music. These protesters had the right to express whatever views on Israel they wished, but no right to do so this venue. If I had taken time out of my day to attend a concert only to find it disrupted by protestors, I would have been furious. Likewise the event where Christie Blatchford's speech had to be cancelled due to protestors. Therefore, I have decided that if I ever find myself going to an event that might be controversial, whether it be a speaker or a politician or a performance by a musical group... I am going to bring cup-cakes. And if some idiot attempts to disrupt the event that I've decided was important for me to see, I am going to express myself by giving the protestors a cup-cake fastball right in the face. Throwing food is a time-honored means of expressing disapproval, whether it be throwing tomatoes at bad actors on stage in days of yore, or whether it be throwing eggs or pieing politicians right now. So I am confident that when I blast protesters in the face with cup-cakes, the law will recognize it as a protected act of expression rather than as an assault. -k

Either the salt was created spontaneously (which "a finished creation" says wouldn't happen), or the salt was brought from the surrounding area (which requires energy) or she wasn't really turned into a pillar of salt at all. "Supposing".....another word for, if. You're objecting to your own supposition?? There's 3 possibilities: (1) God created the salt spontaneously (2) the salt was brought from the surrounding area (3) it didn't really happen the way the Bible says (the "pillar of salt" is allegorical or the whole thing made up.) You objected to case one and offered supposition #2 as a response. We're dealing with that right now. Even if it were true, how do you know that God required an "immense amount of energy" to gather the salt molecules from miles around? Even on a hot day at 100% humidity, a cubic meter of air only holds about 25 grams of water. And when salt water evaporates, most of the salt is left behind (how did they get salt back in those days? They put salt water into a pool, let it evaporate, and the salt was left behind.) There's less than a gram of salt in a cubic meter of sea air. So to get 100kg of salt to Lot's wife's location, God would have had to have harvest that salt from a volume of over 100,000 cubic meters of air and give it energy to accelerate it to location. Bringing the salt there required energy. To say nothing of the hard part of the job, which is either building a crystal around her or replacing the molecules of her body with salt. So, the whole exercise required energy, but "a finished creation" says that wouldn't happen. So we're left No, I'm accepting "a finished creation" (as you defined it-- matter and energy are no longer being created) and using it to contradict other parts of the Bible. See that boldened, "IF?" They're all suppositions! You: "A finished cration" is a fact! Me: If that's true... You: That's a supposition! You can't dismiss as supposition an argument that follows from me accepting your initial premise! To do so would be to dispute your own premise. You're the one insisting that "a finished creation" is a fact. That means God is no longer creating matter or energy. By definition, that's a constraint. Your insistence that God no longer creates matter or energy is a limitation on God's ability. Whether that is by his own choice is irrelevant to the discussion: it's a constraint that limits the ability of Christians to explain many of the situations that are described in the Bible by saying "God did it." What? I never even started with the absurdity of fitting all the kinds of animals onto a 300 cubit boat. My argument was based on the simple fact that there's simply not enough water in the entire earth to float a boat to the top of the mountains of Ararat. You proposed "maybe it was a regional flood!" but a regional flood couldn't possibly put a boat on top of the tallest mountains in that region. It's simply impossible. It's because you condemn others for suggesting things may be allegorical, then when it's convenient to your own beliefs, you're willing to accept other things as allegory. How did you become the authority on which parts are literal and which aren't? And apparently you're the one who gets to decide which. You've been promoting the idea that science proves the Bible to be true... up until we get to portions of the Bible that science proves couldn't have happened that way, at which point we get "well, that's just allegory". It's because you, who've been calling others lemmings who can't think for themselves, are actually the most lemming like of all. Your arguments all appear to come from some authority you admire or some intelligent design website that concocts all these arguments for you. He's not "My Mr Dawkins". I don't think I've ever cited Dawkins on this forum. I've never spit out anything he says. I don't think I would have even heard of Dawkins if it weren't for you and your many, many posts about him. He's not a leader or a "pope" or a priest to me. He's some guy who is out there who doesn't believe in god either. You seem to think that if you can just "beat" Dawkins, you will win the war against atheism and everybody will come back to Jesus. But that's not the case. Many of us were never with Jesus in the first place. We didn't become atheists because some English guy wrote some books. Some of us are atheists because we were never converted. Others are atheists because they ceased to believe, and few of those need any persuasion from Dawkins to make that decision. Maybe instead of worrying about Richard Dawkins, you should worry about figuring out why so many people decide that the church just isn't relevant to them anymore. -k

When the losing side calls for a ceasefire, that translates as "let's stop fighting so that I've got time to regroup and consolidate my position." When the winning side calls for the losing side to stop fighting, that translates as "this is your last chance." Libya's foreign assets were frozen-- not stolen-- to prevent them from vanishing into the pockets of Gaddafi regime officials who might have escaped the country, and to prevent them from being used to purchase more weapons to brutalize civilians. All is not rainbows and unicorns in the newly "liberated" country, however: Blacks are being rounded up in Libya Many blacks are in Libya as migrant workers. However, there is apparently a belief in Libya that many blacks fought along side of Gaddafi's forces. As a result, black people are being rounded up and jailed for ... basically for being black, it sounds like. Obviously this is not a good situation. -k

Doctors Without Borders: Somolia Can't Be Helped -k

Ok, Eve is not a counter-example to "a finished creation" because Eve was not created after creation. Fair point. Lot's wife, on the other hand... you proposed that maybe the salt was gathered from the surrounding air rather than spontaneously created. Supposing that were the case, then matter was not spontaneously created. However, gathering salt molecules from miles around to that specific location and then either infusing it into her body or crystalizing it around her would require an immense amount of energy. Your fact "a finished creation" specifies that neither matter nor energy can be created. So where did the energy to turn Lot's wife into a pillar of salt come from? Let's see... what else have you been demanding answers for? How tall is Mt Ararat? It's pretty darn tall. Over 16,000 ft! And the big question you have asked: How can you dispute a fact (a finished creation) with a supposition (Noah's flood)? The goal wasn't to dispute "a finished creation". The goal was to illustrate that if God is constrained by that rule-- no more creating matter and energy after Creation-- then other stuff in the Bible couldn't have happened the way the Bible says it does. The Bible contradicts the rules set forth by the "facts" you have listed. So we get... "well, ok, maybe that part is allegorical." We got you to concede that Noah's flood must be allegorical, which is a response I'd accept from anybody else, but considering you were ranting at Canadien for daring to suggest that Genesis is allegorical, it sounds kind of hollow coming from you. But now that Dr Craig says it's ok for Christians to believe that creation is allegorical (fact #55!) suddenly you're ok with that too. Your world view seems to shift according to what's convenient to your argument and to what Dr Craig tells you. -k