philh

Perhaps its not clear whos typing what , but whoever Im addressing, the point stands.

Really? have the conspiracy nut jobs published their evidence in a peer reviewed engineering journals? (oh and not some conspiracy nut journal that they publish themselves).

Your wrong the speed of light does not depend on who is measuring it. This is well established by relativity and relativity has enormous amounts of credible evidence to support it. If you are going to say otherwsie you need to show your evidence, you cant just say "actaully it would" and exepct people to take you seriosuly. "Is water H2O or is it 9 protons and 9 neutrons? Is it neutrons and protons or quarks? " You are commiting the fallacy of the false dichotomy. The description of water at a molecular or atomic level are not inconsistent , so your point is meaningless. Are facts constantly changing? It depends what you mean by fact. I'm not sure the idea that blacks were intellectually inferior to white was ever a "fact". It may have been a popular opinion. It better to talk of statments which have overwhelming evidence for them. Science has plenty of them, religion has absolutley zero.

Other forums Ive been on the moderators do give their opinion, why not? They are just there tomake sure everyone keeps to the rules of the forum, that doesnt mean they cant give their own opinions. Can you imagine how broing it would be to moderate without commenting?

OH Bilvon you are just scratching at the surface at the global music conspiracy to enslave us all. Billy Joel is just one of many in the music business in on the conspiracy theory. What about Primal Screm who signalled the attack by releasing the song "Bomb The Pentagon" just one month before 9/11?

Using knowledge of "reprobate human mind " we have doubled life expectancy and improved quailty of life on almost any measure you care to name. Perhaps you can tell us if you would be happy for the applicaitons of modern knowledge to be removed form you and your loved ones. No modern medicine, no sanitation, no skydiving, no internet etc etc?

Perhaps you could give me a reasonable asnwer to the question I asked you originally in this thread. If the 9/11 was planned by the US governemtn to justify war in Iraq why didnt they put at least one IRaqi on the planes? Why didnt they fake some evidence connecting it to IRaq? Why did they admit there was no evidence linking 9/11 to Iraq? Youd think if they were prepared to kill thousands of their own voters they would be at least able to do this?

Its funny this thread was started by BillyVAnce , entitled "more stupidity from PETA" and the lvele of intelligence we get back is : "I peeled an onion the other day. It made me cry. Will that get me off the hook? " youve really made your point.

A chemical response is not in any way equivalent to having the emergent properties of a brain has. Such a comparson is riduclous. All our other primate relatives rarely if ever eat meat. We dont know aboout our most recent common ancestor but that fact alone puts your statemnt into considerable doubt. Even if it were true so what? We also evolved from mammals that msot likely were nocturnal during earlier epochs, does that mean we should be nocturnal?

Do potatoes have brains and nocireceptors?

There's nothing wrong with assigning human traits to animals if its based upon sounds evidence. The idea that animals feel paign and even have emotional lives is based upon well documented evidence. Animals have brains, they have nocireceptors, thhey exhibit behaviours which are consitent with emotions. if you would like some documentation for this I can reccomend you "the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals" by Charles Darwin or Anyhtining by Professor Marc Bekoff or just stay up to date with research in ethology.

Bilvon is right as he so often is. Eating a meat based diet does not make your brain grow more, thats yet another silly rationalisation. The reason I dont eat meat is because I feel empathy for the animal being killed, whats silly about that?

Ive never heard of any evidence of cultural transmission in great white sharks. I happen to have seen a great white shark that swam from Hawaii to California , it happened to eat exactly the same stuff as those Id seen in South Africa. (Pinnipeds) Of course if your life depends upon tracking down a deer then it would unreasonable to find fault with that. But for the vast majority of people there is no such pressure. What my point is, is that it's incredbily inconcistsnet for poeple to condenm cruelty to animlas and yet have no problem with their unnecesary slaughter.

Even if we were perfectly adapted to being a carnivore and all of Bilvons objetions were wrong (which they are not) this is still the naturalistic fallacy. Why is something preferable just because it is natural? Its natural for us to die when falling form a great height , but humans modify their enviroment to suit them, hence the parachute. Similarly we have 0 need to eat animals and if we wish to modify our diet we can easliy do so. So the question is not one of, whats natural, who cares whats natural? The people who go on about it being natural dont walk around without clothes, they dont object to mdoern medicine. the question is what is ethical?

then why present your opinions on a forum if you can present no justification?

One might argue you need to kill for meat if the like expectancy of vegatarians was lower than meat eaters, but it isnt. So where's the justification?

I agree that our pointy teeth did not evovle to eat tofu, so what? Our eyes didnt evolve to read out altimeters either. Your committing the naturalstic fallacy. Just because something is natural does not mean its good. A comet destroying our civilisation would be natural, us doing somethig to stop it would be unnatural, I presume you wouldnt go with the natual alternative their. So please dont give me naturalistic BS. Also please dont make a straw man, I dint say that eating meat = torture, I asked why someone would object to torturing animals but not object to killing them. In my book both torture and murder are awful things to do although they are not the same crimes. But I fail to understand why torture is not acceptable , but killing is.

Increasing wealth for multiple parties does not require a zero sum game, it can easily be a positive sum game. David Ricardo discovered this in the 18th century. Its simple maths of comparative advantage. Technical innovation also means wealth can increase as a positive sum game. That doesnt mean measure of inequality cant go up and down, but there's no neccesary link to increasing wealth and increasing inequality.

Last I checked the human mortality rates was still around the 100% mark. So there are 0 activities around that wont have people getting killed doing them. People die iin the shower. But deliberatley killing somone is not a par with an accidental death. If you think that is so then there should be no different penalty from manslaughter to murder to complete accidental death. Do you think that?

If you think its wrong to torture animals why do you think its okay to kill them? Would you feel the same about humans? Torture= wrong , murder=ok?

I think its a big leap to say "possibly killed" and were deliberately killed. Sure it might be possible that someone died in making my shirt. Someone might have died testing my parachute, but they werent deliberatley killed so your analogy is ridiculous. Sorry rereading your post not sure if you were making the analogy or critiquing it, so ignore this post if the latter.

My questrion to any conpsiiracy theoriest out there is this: If the Us governemnt organnised 9/11 to justify Middle East aggression, why didnt they think to put at least 1 Iraqi on the planes?

I think there is some confusion on this thread perhaps caused by people not reading the actual news story. The French government prosecuted the church for fraud in placing undue pressure on people to give up large amounts of money. The prosecution asked for the church to be disbanded and the government refused to do this. They were not prosecuted for their doctrines. Of course their doctrines are ridiculous, but no more so than any other religion. The fact that one can point to L Ron Hubbard's commensts as undermining Scientology is valid , but there are many many other facts that undermine most other religions. The only differene betweena religion and a cult in my opinion is the number of members. Since the origin of most religions is lost in the distance past we can't say whehter or not they were set up charlatans like Hubbard or genuine nut cases like David Koresh. Im not sure it really matters anyway.

I dont think there is sufficeint evidence to conclude JFk was going to withdraw from Vietnam. Plans to withdraw troops by 1965 made by JFK were contigent on victory! In the sppech he was going to give on the day he was shot, we see this txt: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/speech.txt "Our security and strength, in the last analysis, directly depend on the security and strength of others--and that is why our military and economic assistance plays such a key role in enabling those who live on the periphery of the Communist world to maintain their independence of choice. Our assistance to these nations can be painful, risky and costly--as is true in Southeast Asia today. But we dare not weary of the task. For our assistance makes possible the stationing of 3.5 million allied troops along the Communist frontier at one-tenth the cost of maintaining a comparable number of American soldiers. A successful Communist breakthrough in these areas, necessitating direct United States intervention, would cost us several times as much as our entire foreign aid program--and might cost us heavily in American lives as well. About 70 per cent of our military assistance goes to nine key countries located on or near the borders of the Communist bloc--nine countries confronted directly or indirectly with the threat of Communist aggression--Viet Nam, Free China, Korea, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Greece, Turkey and Iran. No one of these countries possesses on its own the resources to maintain the forces which our own chiefs of staff think needed in the common interest. Reducing our efforts to train, equip and assist their armies can only encourage Communist penetration and require in time the increased overseas deployment of American combat forces. And reducing the help needed to bolster these nations that undertake to help defend freedom can have the same disastrous result."

"The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong," Anyone spot something a bit dodgy? Why would you go to a hong Kong branch of an arab bank to find out what their respective governments are doing? As far I can see there is no evidence whatsover to back up this story. The sources are ludicrous. Indeed this story has been denied by the Saudi central bank governor . Its easy for a lazy journalist to make a scare and it seems ever easier to fall for it.