zuluguy

was not meant to be an attack, was meant to be a civilized debate. Oh BTW, that's how it works in science, asking questions is not considered "old unoriginal attack". If something is true it will stand up to any number of questions/litmus tests.

honestly, I don't get it, how is it relevant to what you posted, Anyways, sorry to have spoiled your party by stating facts and disappointed you.

Any reason it has to be a "He" could it not be a "She" besides aren't women in some ways more compassionate than men are.

you almost sound like you want religious faith to take credit for the questions science can not answer. You gotta work hard to answer the difficult questions, that is what science is all about instead faith is an easy and flawed alternative.

perhaps a lot of religious indoctrination has left indellible mark on few......

glad you say this cause all this while I've been trying to make this point. Science teaches us to be humble and continue to explore

is that all you got pal to make such outlandish claims that "he got away with bullshit" I could understand that Frank Borman might have felt with his experience@Cornell. People can disagree with other people. Sometimes your favourite theories have to be discarded simly because they are wrong. There is no other community that is put through stringint of tests than scientific community. I'm yet to hear a group of scientists, Engineers, and astrobiologists, modern philosophers who have summed up all the work of Sagan as bullshit or got away with Bullshit. In case you are not clear, science is not theory, theory, bullshit, theory, bullshit..... it does not work that way. Science is facts, facts, facts and more facts. Yes sometimes those facts are corrected upon and refined with more observation since we improve the understanding with better aids such as technology, theories and instrumentation.

So apprently, the folks who wrote Bible/religious scriptures from other religions should perhaps have read the mind of god to have reproduced books that describe his relationship to humans, why not bacteria, dogs, chimpanzees, apes, etc. So merely the fact that you have conscienceness does not mean you have a direct hotline to god. Evolution has put humans at the top of the food chain and we happen to assume we are the byproducts of a masterpiece by god. Much to the contrary, if you understand evolutionary biology, you would see the evidence screaming on your face that human bodies are filled with "design flaws" The scriptures of all religion have been morphed since ages to current times to accomodate current views and somehow relate them to present times and make them look relevent. Start out by assuming all of science/cosmology is wrong and start doubting it and you can work yourself to all the laws governing the universe again and come back to the current knowledge. Now apply the same test to religion by doubting everything is wrong and you get onto a slippery slope whereby you could never recover to come to the present blind faith without reason. Human minds can easily be made to believe in scriptures cause it can be comforting, but would someone want to be comforted in falsehood or would you rather live perhaps without knowing things. Well anyways, I can understand its hard to wrap your minds around it, certainly background in Science will help to get off the ground.

I admire your courage to repose all your faith in a book that is not even a first hand account of the events that transpired 2000 years ago. No one to validate, a book that has clearly put earth at the center and humans all too important. Not trying to change people. All I'm saying is look beyond and be open to reason. Mankind made progress because they looked beyond the scriptures and tried to understand the true book of nature. Imagine if we got stuck with the scriptures would we have progressed as a mankind, the resounding answer is NO

tell me how self consciousness arises form inorganic and organic chemistry. *** well, we (scientific community) never claimed that we know it all, the quest to try to uncover is exciting and grander. Sometimes knowing that we don't know it all is better, that gives life a purpose to uncovers the mysteries of nature. The day we will know it all is probably going to be really a sad day, that is when you do not have a purpose. self consciousness is a slow evolutionary process that evolved after millions of years of survival merely by chance. >What combination of hadrons and leptons will ever produce love? A lot of human traits can be observed in primates and other animals. Reciprocal altruism is something we can attribute to current day charitable actions of humans. Some forms of Love can be attributed to survival of the fittest quality that evolved to its present form. Remember we can not look at these human attributes and think them happend in small or human time scales. Think about millions of years, its sort of hard to wrap your brain around it. >On the contrary we are uniquely special We are unique but for different reasons. We are unique because we are a product of several evolutionary accidents and happend to have evolved to an intelligent life form, that is truly unique.

that is somewhat limited way of looking at life. Why confine your life with the fictional characters you describe. Just take a look around you, the universe is much grander than you can imagine, We are not cast in a central stage with central roles. Science is telling us we are nothing special and will never be, on the contrary we are really miniscule, now that is what makes it worth living for, to cherish that you are special because you came into being. What makes you think you are so special that God chose you. I'm not trying to demean you, I respectfully askyou this. None of us are any more or any less special. Remember human brains are know to imagine things that comfort us and make us feel better. Did you directly talk to god? what language did you talk? did he have an accent? was it male or female? black or white? On a different note, it takes courage to ask these tough questions and face the reality. Myths might comfort us but they don't speak the truth that we can verify so far.

really don't mean to highjack this thread but would be very curious on what is the otherstuff you think he got away with. I particularly think "bullshit" is too strong a word to the amazing work he has done, calling his views eccentric/far fetched is one thing but you my friend can not call his work bullshit, someone who is acclaimed by millions can you produce any theories or publish scientific papers to refute his work as bullshit that are referenced/accepted by many astronomers, c

I understand where you are coming from but do we really need to justify science or on its pretext to go to moon. There have been ample studies and opinions form famous theoritical physicists, cosmologists that space exploration should not need to be justified or done in the pretext of science. On one had honestly, a lot of research done from moon or from ISS can be also cost effectively done from earth. I'm not discounting the micro-gravity environment but you get the idea. Exploration is inherently a quality of human existance, I think we would be fooling ourselves if we said lunar missions leads to better science. However, it clearly will spur jobs, engineering, rocket design R&D, electronics, space habitat, etc. Unmanned programs have yielded better science in terms of understanding the solar system formation, planets, moons of saturn etc. etc. However, I support manned missions because human explorations is inevitable.

any form of alien civilization (intelligent life) would be far from similar to our own. Significant number of stars in our galaxy are binary or even trinary star systems. For them to find anything in common with our solar system would again be human arrogance to assume that we are some how placed in the cosmic drama and have the central roles somehow defined by God. It will be hard for some fraction of the folks to come to terms that we are due to a series of accidents for cherish for what you are right now for you won't be able to when you are not around cause you cease to exist.

that's true, that would be befitting of our arrogance to be unique, however, there are other possibilities of multi-verse and such (only theories) I see a common pattern here: each time either when we have made great discoveries in Cosmology or at the cusp of making some, religion someohow finds a way to accomodate it into its teachings in order to pacify and apease the followers. just an oveservation.