zuluguy

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Posts posted by zuluguy

  1. Quote


    same old unoriginal attack on Catholics...



    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.

  2. Quote


    http://www.youtube.com/...&feature=related

    ...but i'm sure that's ur excuse too.

    for all you drummers, check out the 1:39 mark.

    ...or, for all you demons, check out mark 1:39.



    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.

  4. Quote


    Interesting, so when science fails you put your faith in an intellectual construct and trust it to provide for your salvation.



    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.

  6. Quote


    am a Christian after investigating several spiritual paths with disappointing results
    ***
    what you call mypoic could be construed as mypoic to others on your findings about several spiritual paths and your acceptance of one of them.
    Sorry to put out some of the facts that govern the universe and disappoint you.


    ***
    Just because I don't understand something doesn't mean that I have to rule it out. I had a professor in grad school that taught some things make sense, some things make no sense and, just because something makes no sense does not automatically make it nonsense.


    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

  7. Quote


    Borman recalled the abuse he and his shipmates endured at Cornell, instigated by the fatuous prof. Sagan.



    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.

  8. Quote


    Scripture or the Holy Bible is best understood as a wonderful love letter explaining the relationship of God to His children. You are seeing it as something else.


    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.

  9. Quote


    The expression is based on Scriptures indicating that God/Jesus chooses us first. For example:

    John 15:19
    "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.

    Salvation is for all but not all will choose to be saved. Our Father knows who His children are before we know Who our Father is.

    I have had several life changing or enhancing experiences with the Lord. If your divine appointment manifests you will know. The phenomena is beyond human description.



    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


  10. 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.

  11. Quote


    I believe in God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures that relate to Them because of the change in my life.


    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.

    Quote


    God chose me and I answered the call.


    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.

  12. Quote


    To this day, that still annoys me, along with a lot of other bullshit he got away with in his lifetime.



    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

  13. Quote


    I mean, if you want to go to the moon for scientific reasons,



    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.

  14. 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.

  15. Quote


    If you consider that there are somewhere around 10^24 stars in the universe, it would be very shocking to find out that there is NOT any life other than on earth.



    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.

  16. Quote


    There's nothing in any of them that precludes extra-terrestrial life.



    Well, if not directly, it sure does indirectly. Most if not all religions place mankind and the earth at the center of their belief system. None of them even remotely hinted or referenced to the fact that there could be potential for life elsewhere.
    "When Jesus came to earth....." quote
    Of all the places he chose earth, so either we got to be very special or we got to be arrogant to believe we are the special ones.

  17. Quote

    "What makes you think, that if there is more life outside of Earth but in God's creation, that He hasn't done the same for them as he has for us?"



    this contridicts to what you might have heard
    "Bible Leaves No Room for Extraterrestrial Life"
    [/url]http://www.beliefnet.com/News/Science-Religion/2004/03/Bible-Leaves-No-Room-For-Extraterrestrial-Life.aspx[url]

  18. Would your view of religion change if NASA were to discover life (microbial) in outer solar system.
    How about if they were to discover another Earth like planet.
    Its almost looking positive, with 400 + planets discovered and counting.
    How would you reconcile with life outside earth and religion.

  19. that is certailnly true. People polled with a higher level of education and who can factually reason rationally would reason prior to polling even if they did not like the outcome of the poll.
    And it is also concerning for the future that people will deliberately vote on issues and items where their personal misguided opinions will override the existing facts.

    I guess what I'm trying to say is it would be interesting to see how the outcome of the poll changes should the demographics be people with higher level of education in Science and engineering.

  20. though I'm not affected by the slow down in economy or the home mortgage crisis, I know few of my buddies who have been severely affected by this, 3 of them I know of personally have quit due to monetary constraints.....personally, I've slowed down the number of jumps I do, with increase in jump prices, air fares to travel to boogies, gas prices, etc. besides who know what's in store in the job front, save that check for a rainy day.....

  24. What would you consider difficult slots on a Big Way? I realize other factors play in such as shape of the formation early floater, diver to late diver, that determine difficulty of slots. But in general what are the key/difficult slots that go to the best of the best. I would have thought the anchor slots are difficult slots but it seems people tend to believe late divers are hard slots. I've done big way (100 ways) and most of my dive I was late diver and I did not necessarily think those are hard to fly but then what do I know....
    but then 100 way late diver is sme what different to a 400 way late diver