Three months worth of kerosene (or six weeks in the second generation version) is an astronomical investment for a culture who's barely able to meet it's day to day needs. For example, it's almost totally unheard of for an individual to buy a week's worth of any type of food (even rice). How much less likely are they to buy a non-essential tool like a flashlight? No wonder the creators speak of "villages" buying these... But that assumes these cultures have villages with their own purchasing power - do the villages collect taxes and have officials which then spend the public money pool? Maybe it will help the developing countries, but it seems a little naive.

Nevertheless, it's a good PR angle for them to get more funding. Practically, I'd love to see those things sold on Amazon or something for ~$20. They look like really good units for off-the-grid homes.

Doing a simple calculation of the area of a disk 10,000 light-years vs. 100,000 light-years (but 50,000 light-years in radius) yields an area of our galaxy about 25 times larger that we can NOT survey for supernova remnants vs. what we can.

That's incorrect. We have radio telescope images of the galactic center which is 26000 light years away. Second, the estimates are based not on what we can't see, but the percentage that we can see and then averaging for the rest.

The next part is that supernova remnants don’t just form out of nothing, they form from the explosions of dying stars. The stars that live and die the fastest still take about 10,000,000 years before they “go nova” and release a cloud of debris that will later become what we observe. That’s pretty much the minimum time a star can “live” during the current epoch of the Universe. Only after that will we see a supernova form.

Actually, O3 type stars can go nova in about 3 million years time, according to that model.

So, add that to our estimate of the age by the number of stars and we have 10,250,000 years, or 10.25 million years for the age of the galaxy. You should note at this point I’ve been saying “age of the galaxy.” That’s because this would only be used to date our galaxy, not the Universe as a whole. So you need to add in the time for galaxy formation … which is still a number that’s hotly debated, but no respected astronomer will say happens instantaneously.

You can't argue that the galaxy is that old because the stars are that old, when that is the thing in dispute. The argument is intending to prove the stars couldn't be that old in the first place, thus proving the galaxy is not that old.

BUT, there’s another complication to this situation which shows why this apparent “method” for dating our galaxy isn’t valid: Supernova remnants fade! They only are visible for a few tens of thousands of years. What does this mean for our estimate of 1,000,000 years for the age of our galaxy? Well, by the time the “oldest” supernova is fading, we starting to observe supernova 200! We should only expect to see in the neighborhood of a few hundred supernova remnants in our vicinity, regardless of how old our galaxy actually is."

According to

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/supernova/snrfab.html

"Obviously, Davies never went SNR hunting in a galactic environment, but I have. For one thing, an SNR becomes essentially invisible, even in a non-crowded environment, within 1,000,000 year tops, maybe less, depending on the specifics of the supernova and environment. But in practice they become essentially invisible long before."

So, they can be visible up to 1,000,000 years, yet we don't find even one at the maximum range of expansion that we are able to detect (or anywhere near it). We should be seeing the entire range of the spectrum, but the biggest we can find (according to their model), is 20000 years old. So this evidence doesn't hold up and the point remains.

Old hat.

"We cannot observe supernova remnants across our entire galaxy – basically nebulae. Supernova events we can see across the visible universe, but the actual gaseous remnants are much fainter because they are more diffuse. Because of dust and gas in the way, we cannot see all the objects in our own Galaxy. Probably the farthest we can see into the galaxy is maybe to a distance of 10,000 light-years. The galaxy is about 100,000 light-years across. Doing a simple calculation of the area of a disk 10,000 light-years vs. 100,000 light-years (but 50,000 light-years in radius) yields an area of our galaxy about 25 times larger that we can NOT survey for supernova remnants vs. what we can.

So now, we need to multiply our 10,000 years by 25, giving us 250,000 years for the age of the galaxy.

The next part is that supernova remnants don’t just form out of nothing, they form from the explosions of dying stars. The stars that live and die the fastest still take about 10,000,000 years before they “go nova” and release a cloud of debris that will later become what we observe. That’s pretty much the minimum time a star can “live” during the current epoch of the Universe. Only after that will we see a supernova form.

So, add that to our estimate of the age by the number of stars and we have 10,250,000 years, or 10.25 million years for the age of the galaxy. You should note at this point I’ve been saying “age of the galaxy.” That’s because this would only be used to date our galaxy, not the Universe as a whole. So you need to add in the time for galaxy formation … which is still a number that’s hotly debated, but no respected astronomer will say happens instantaneously.

BUT, there’s another complication to this situation which shows why this apparent “method” for dating our galaxy isn’t valid: Supernova remnants fade! They only are visible for a few tens of thousands of years. What does this mean for our estimate of 1,000,000 years for the age of our galaxy? Well, by the time the “oldest” supernova is fading, we starting to observe supernova 200! We should only expect to see in the neighborhood of a few hundred supernova remnants in our vicinity, regardless of how old our galaxy actually is."

Bracingly, I would try to explain to someone putting forth that line of reasoning that introducing an additional unknown mechanism of a far greater, more astronomically high improbability and complexity to explain the original and (by comparison) far simpler, more probable thing runs counter-intuitive to the very measure of expectation they invoked to dismiss it in the first place.

Like his answer: " I'm not sure." As to the rest, others see the fact that we are here as an indication of a Higher Power. They say that probabilities mitigate against our existence in such astronomical numbers that this 'randomness' Tyson refers to speaks against life coming into being without purposeful input.

You keep using the word diet as something you can just go on and off of. That's the problem; 'Going on a diet' implies that it's temporary. What's needed to eat and live healthy is a permanent lifetstyle change. In other words, you don't stop the diet. The previous diet is what led to getting overweight in the first place, so of course they gain the weight back if they start eating like that again. Exercise all you want, if you take in more calories than you expend, you will gain weight. If you expend more calories than you take in, you will lose weight. It doesn't matter if you have a problem with that, or if people get depressed, or if you just straight up don't think it's a health issue (it is), that's how it works. That's why this argument takes place when this issue is brought up. It really is just a matter of will power and education on nutrition. How much will power's needed depends on the person, along with their knowledge on nutrition and eating well. Breaking these long standing habits can be incredibly tough, but not impossible.

There's a lot of grey area in the discussion of being overweight and healthy/fit/etc. If you have terrible eating habits, exercise will only make things a bit better; it wont magically counteract all the negative aspects of your body composition, or of the food you eat. The effect food can have on a person astronomically outweighs the potential effects of exercise. That's in no way saying exercise is pointless, but if you're diet's not in check, the exercise alone is like ordering a diet coke with your ten cheeseburgers.
>> ^bmacs27:

You guys aren't listening to what I'm saying. There is nothing wrong with eating right and exercising. I have a problem with caloric restriction, or as it is commonly called "dieting." Further, I have a problem with judging health from weight or BMI. There is very little data to back that up, and in fact the data suggest that a low BMI is actually more problematic than a moderately high 30ish BMI in terms of life expectancy. My issue is that it's been so ingrained in people to associate weight loss (an aesthetic issue) with fitness (a health issue). There are plenty of people that are fit, and no matter what they do, will carry extra weight.
To me "eating right" means eating healthy foods, e.g. whole foods, fruits, vegetables, proteins as your primary nutrition rather than fatty and heavily sweetened foods. Exercise is the most important part of the equation. The data shows that so long as you are not sedentary you can pretty much eat and weigh whatever with little to no health consequence.
The depression does not come simply from the lack of eating, and thus the cessation of a rewarding activity. It comes from the diversion of energy away from active use (e.g. in the nervous system) and towards the restocking of fat stores. In other words, you'll never lose weight, and instead will just be bummed out all the time.
You talk of "millions of people" that have successfully lost weight. I'd like to see a data that shows a diet emphasizing caloric restriction leading to long term reductions in weight. Every study I've seen shows that diets of that sort yield short term weight loss although subjects generally reacquire the weight within a year of stopping the diet, and report depression during the diet. Prove me wrong.

I love the story of this picture. This shows the beauty of scientific exploration. The astronomers picked a apparently empty spot in space and used 10 days of Hubble observation time to amass the information used to produce this picture. They didn't know if they would find anything at all--and vastly expanded our knowledge of the earliest universe.

Less than half an hour is a lot longer than 2 mins to refuel, even more so that is shortens your battery life with repeated use. You also have to change your lifestyle around that. I can't tell you how many times I refuel in a rush...can't do that shit no more. The range on some of the more traditional EV's are like 70miles. I drive 30 miles a day, so I would have to refill like every other day instead of every other week! That amount of time isn't cheap, this type of car costs you time (see also money). Talk about annoying. Don't get me wrong, this is the tech I want! It just isn't as mature as I would want if I was in the market for a car. And @Jinx nailed it on the head, you need LOTS of these stations for that long a charge time...every gas station will look like a woman's rest room after an event otherwise. This can only be "free" as long as a lot of people don't use it. The capital costs to supply the amount of energy to replace gas is pretty astronomical, overpromising here for sure. Still neat though, let rich people finance the way for EVs still looks like the order of the day

>> ^Ickster:

Technological questions aside, the economics will likely never work for scheduled flights. Concorde was scrapped because it was a money loser, not because it didn't work. I don't see anything here that suggests a ticket on this thing wouldn't be astronomically expensive.


Actually this is wrong. The Concorde did lose money at first, but then they did a survey asking people how much they thought a ticket from NYC to London on the Concorde would cost, and the results of the survey was that everyone thought it was more expensive than they were actually charging. So then they decided to charge a lot more for the tickets and market it as a "luxury" flight. This gimmick was successful - it became more profitable than any other division of BA.

It was retired after the famous crash while taking off in France. Even though that was it's only crash, after long investigation, and decline in first class passengers, they never brought it back.

I'm glad that many of them made it to museums, because the Concorde was a phenomenal piece of engineering.

I have no idea how well this Reaction Engine will work, but I hope to see it succeed.

Technological questions aside, the economics will likely never work for scheduled flights. Concorde was scrapped because it was a money loser, not because it didn't work. I don't see anything here that suggests a ticket on this thing wouldn't be astronomically expensive.

Many authors spend years just trying to get their name out there, so for awhile...it's in their interest to have their work shared if it's not selling like hot cakes on day one.

Once they become more established and known, then the sharing will have more of an impact on their income.


Basically, starting out...without a name they are going to be lucky if people even consider reading their stuff. Lots of guys go a decade before they get to where they can make a living off their work. It's quicker now to pass your work around, but there also a lot more competition with the digital age. A fairly active self-published author whose been tracking his progression on his blog for years says that a writer's best effort for advertisement is writing more books. So that the chance of you being featured on Amazon or some other digital offering is higher, and that you have the ability to offer one of your older books for greatly reduced prices or even free to pick up new readers who may go on to buy your products. It's one of those scenarios that you're kinda damned if you do, damned if you don't on both sides of the equation. Customer can't buy every authors books nor read them all, so free might be what it takes to get your foot in the door with them. However authors can't make a living giving away all their stuff to get noticed, but they may never get enough of a notice to make a living off of their work without giving it away at some point to pick up reviews and word of mouth.


An author, their feelings on the issue is going to vary greatly depending on their success. If they've been at it for years, they might be happy to pick up the extra eye balls from someone spreading their work around. Where as someone like King probably takes a much dimmer view on it. But there's been an up swing in complaints from publishers about libraries and how much they pay for digital stuff, so all that complaining kinda becomes white noise after awhile despite how valid their complaints may be...because every industry seems to be complaining about "lost sales" with some astronomical number to attach to it.

@ChaosEngine

Oh sweet irony, I'm being called wilfully ignorant by a young-earther.

I'm not going to refute you. I don't need to; @BicycleRepairMan has already done an excellent job of it.

An excellent refutation? He cherry picked one sentence out of my reply, a reply where I had demonstrated the fallacy of his argument from incredulity by proving his assumption of the constancy of radioactive decay rates was nothing more than the conventional wisdom of our times. Is this what passes for logical argumentation in your mind? He posited a fallacious argument. I exposed the fallacy. He ignored the refutation and cherry picked his reply. You seem to be showing that in your eagerness to agree with everything which is contrary to my position that you have a weak filter on information which supports your preconceived ideas. Why is it that a skeptic is always pathologically skeptical of everything except his own positions, I wonder?

@BicycleRepairMan

...and to see an exampe of such a racket, check the flood "geology" link.

Seriously, you cant see the blinding irony in your own words? So, things like radiometric dating, fossils, geology, astronomy, chemistry, biology are all just parts of a self-perpetuating racket confirming each others conclusions in a big old circlejerking conspiracy of astronomical proportions.. well, lets assume then that it is. So they are basically chasing the foregone conclusion that the universe is over 13 billion years old and that life on this planet emerged some 3,6 billion years ago and has evolved ever since. But where did these wild conclusions come from? Who established the dogma that scientists seems to mindlessly work to confirm, and why? And why 13,72 billion years then? Why not 100 billion years, or 345 million years?

The thing is, what you have here is an alleged "crime" with no incentives, no motivation.. Why on earth would all the worlds scientists, depentently and independently and over many generations converge to promote a falsehood of no significance to anyone? it might make some kind of sense if someones doctrine was threatened unless the world was exactly 13.72 billion years old. Or if someone believed they were going to hell unless they believed trilobites died out 250 million years ago.. The thing is, nobody believes that.

The truth is pretty much staring you in the face right here. The conclusions of science on things like the age of the earth emerged gradually; Darwin, and even earlier naturalists had no idea of the exact age of the earth, or even a good approximation, but they did figure this much: It must be very, very old. So old that it challenged their prior beliefs and assumptions about a god-created world as described in their holy book. And thats were nearly all scientists come from: They grew up and lived in societies that looked to holy books , scripture and religion for the answers, and everybody assumed they had proper answers until the science was done.If scientists were corrupt conspirators working to preserve dogma, they be like Kent Hovind or Ken Ham. Ignoring vast mountains of facts and evidence, and focus on a few distorted out-of-context quotations to confirm what they already "know".

Not only was your prior argument fallacious, but I refuted it. Now you're ignoring that and cherry picking your replies here. Seems pretty intellectually dishonest to me? In any case, I'll reply to what you've said here. I was going to get into the technical issues concerning why scientists believe the Universe is so old, and the history of the theory, but so far you have given me no reason to believe that any of it will be carefully considered.

Instead I'll answer with a portion of an article I found, which was printed in "The Ledger" on Feb 17th 2000. It's interview of a molecular biologist who wanted to remain anonymous

Caylor: "Do you believe that the information evolved?"

MB: "George, nobody I know in my profession believes it evolved. It was engineered by genius beyond genius, and such information could not have been written any other way. The paper and ink did not write the book! Knowing what we know, it is ridiculous to think otherwise."

Caylor: "Have you ever stated that in a public lecture, or in any public writings?"

MB: "No, I just say it evolved. To be a molecular biologist requires one to hold onto two insanities at all times:
One, it would be insane to believe in evolution when you can see the truth for yourself.
Two, it would be insane to say you don't believe evolution. All government work, research grants, papers, big college lectures -- everything would stop. I'd be out of a job, or relegated to the outer fringes where I couldn't earn a decent living.”

Caylor: “I hate to say it, but that sounds intellectually dishonest.”

MB: “The work I do in genetic research is honorable. We will find the cures to many of mankind's worst diseases. But in the meantime, we have to live with the elephant in the living room.”

Caylor: “What elephant?”

MB: “Creation design. It's like an elephant in the living room. It moves around, takes up space, loudly trumpets, bumps into us, knocks things over, eats a ton of hay, and smells like an elephant. And yet we have to swear it isn't there!”

Here are some selected quotes:

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

Richard Lewontin

"In China its O.K. to criticize Darwin but not the government, while in the United States its O.K. to criticize the government, but not Darwin."

Dr. J.Y. Chen,

Chinese Paleontologist

Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic."

S. C. Todd,
Correspondence to Nature 410(6752):423, 30 Sept. 1999

"Because there are no alternatives, we would almost have to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it."

Steven Pinker,
Professor of Psychology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA., "How the Mind Works," [1997]

"Biologists are simply naive when they talk about experiments designed to test the theory of evolution. It is not testable. They may happen to stumble across facts which would seem to conflict with its predictions. These facts will invariably be ignored and their discoverers will undoubtedly be deprived of continuing research grants."

Professor Whitten,
Professor of Genetics, University of Melbourne, Australia, 1980 Assembly Week address.

"Science is not so much concerned with truth as it is with consensus. What counts as truth is what scientists can agree to count as truth at any particular moment in time. [Scientists] are not really receptive or not really open-minded to any sorts of criticisms or any sorts of claims that actually are attacking some of the established parts of the research (traditional) paradigm, in this case neo-Darwinism. So it is very difficult for people who are pushing claims that contradict that paradigm to get a hearing. They find it hard to [get] research grants; they find it hard to get their research published; they find it very hard."

Prof. Evelleen Richards,
Historian of Science at the University of NSW, Australia

Speaks for itself, I think..

@shinyblurry said
It's quite a racket they have going, where the evidence is interpreted by the conclusion. Last time I checked that wasn't science.

...and to see an exampe of such a racket, check the flood "geology" link.

Seriously, you cant see the blinding irony in your own words? So, things like radiometric dating, fossils, geology, astronomy, chemistry, biology are all just parts of a self-perpetuating racket confirming each others conclusions in a big old circlejerking conspiracy of astronomical proportions.. well, lets assume then that it is. So they are basically chasing the foregone conclusion that the universe is over 13 billion years old and that life on this planet emerged some 3,6 billion years ago and has evolved ever since. But where did these wild conclusions come from? Who established the dogma that scientists seems to mindlessly work to confirm, and why? And why 13,72 billion years then? Why not 100 billion years, or 345 million years?

The thing is, what you have here is an alleged "crime" with no incentives, no motivation.. Why on earth would all the worlds scientists, depentently and independently and over many generations converge to promote a falsehood of no significance to anyone? it might make some kind of sense if someones doctrine was threatened unless the world was exactly 13.72 billion years old. Or if someone believed they were going to hell unless they believed trilobites died out 250 million years ago.. The thing is, nobody believes that.

The truth is pretty much staring you in the face right here. The conclusions of science on things like the age of the earth emerged gradually; Darwin, and even earlier naturalists had no idea of the exact age of the earth, or even a good approximation, but they did figure this much: It must be very, very old. So old that it challenged their prior beliefs and assumptions about a god-created world as described in their holy book. And thats were nearly all scientists come from: They grew up and lived in societies that looked to holy books , scripture and religion for the answers, and everybody assumed they had proper answers until the science was done.If scientists were corrupt conspirators working to preserve dogma, they be like Kent Hovind or Ken Ham. Ignoring vast mountains of facts and evidence, and focus on a few distorted out-of-context quotations to confirm what they already "know".

This is a very ugly misconception that you seem to have. Except for several very vocal celebrities, Atheists aren't "against" religion... there certainly isn't some central creed or governing body telling us what to organize against.

What Atheists are against, in the western world, is having our government (and hence our lives) tainted by beliefs that we don't hold. In Muslim countries, there are harsh penalties (up to Death) for blasphemy... so you won't find many people speaking up. In the US, Muslims and Hindus aren't making laws to persecute us, hence why you don't hear us complaining about them.

There's no crusade to remove Religion... There's no attempt to persecute Christians, we just want the ability to go about our heathen lives in peace.

Here is a bunch of atheists who disagree with you: http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism

This is probably because the content in the video was a pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-philosophical sermon that made such astronomical leaps that it didn't need to be said.

Pretty harsh point for the people who enjoyed it. If that's true then make your case against it, since you have understood it so well as to completely dismiss it.

There wasn't an argument made for this. For some reason, you seem to believe that "the things we do in life have no meaning after we die" turns people into sociopaths... And since we're not all sociopaths, that proves that God exists. The first issue is that you assume that 'meaninglessness' leads to sociopathic behavior. Secondly, this is a textbook example of Denying the Antecedant fallacy.

Show me where anyone said this, or even implied it.

--Skipping the story--

Is this really your argument? 80% of the people you meet were raised Christian (even most of the Atheists)... This is confirmation bias... You can't say something is put there by God when Religion was preaching to them on a weekly basis. If there really were some sort of imperative planted by God... wouldn't there be far less religious wars?

Breaking news... people really do spend their entire lives 'waxing philosophically'... People do die for things that their religion has told them was wrong, but they felt was right (Anti-Gay Violence?).

That's what is called sitting in Gods lap to slap His face, or borrowing from my worldview to establish yours, and this really isn't an argument in your favor. Also, as far as sin goes, do you understand Christian theology?

This is news to me... I believe Mormons teach this, but all other denominations preach that when you accept the Holy Spirit, it moves you to do good deeds... that the good deeds aren't your own.

Revelation 22:12

And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.

You seem to be deliberately misunderstanding me here. I was very specifically using the definition of 'meaningless' that the speaker above uses... as in, 'meaning nothing after you die'.

But that isn't the definition he used. He applied it to past present and future.

My point exactly. The only thing that matters is that you've accepted Jesus as your Savior. NOTHING else matters... hence it is meaningless.

Where do you get the hence from? Meaning is meaning. Even if there was only one meaningful act you could ever do, it would still be meaningful. However, in the context of God, everything takes on its true meaning, attaining the purpose it was created for.

You completely ignored my point here. Except for the Mennonites, there are no other denominations (in the US) that take a hard stance against violence. None. Zero. This country is 80% Christian, and yet we've been at war for 209 of 235 years of our existence.

No ignored my point that religions don't matter, because the true church is the body of Christ. You want to blame an institution, and that's fine, but that isn't what the church is.

Let me be very clear on this: ALL CHRISTIAN RELIGIONS IN THE US ARE FALSE purely based on this one single fact (again, excluding Mennonites)... Granted, that doesn't prove that God doesn't exist... but it certainly does mean that I can't trust any US-based Christians...

I believe all denominations are false because they bring separation to the body of Christ.

What have you done to end discrimination (of ALL types)? Have you participated in any protests against wars, for Gay Marriage, for Women's Rights? Have you stood up in Church to let everyone know that you think it's wrong to discriminate against others, regardless of what they've done?

I'm against discrimination, flat out, and I would say something if I see it. I don't go to protests, no. I use my time to help people in many other ways.

I'd recommend reading up on philosophy, logical debate, and comparative religion... and finding a denomination that is above reproach. The reason Atheists always seem to have the same 'tired' arguments all the time is because we don't need to have new ones... the old arguments still come out in our favor.

I'd recommend the same to you, and the old arguments obviously are not coming out in your favor since atheism is in decline

http://www.sneps.net/RD/uploads/1-Shall%20the%20Religious%20Inherit%20the%20Earth.pdf

This is the point where most Atheists become seriously pissed... Simply stating that someone is wrong because they don't believe what you believe is not the way to have a discussion. Especially when what you believe isn't widely believed by your own fellow Christians. LCMS, Presbyterians and Seventh-Day Adventists are the only denominations that officially preach Young-Earth Creationism...

The whole point is, if it is an old earth, it doesn't make sense that Jesus would come after 198000 years of struggle. That doesn't really prove anything, but the entire point is invalidated if it is a young Earth. Do you see what I am saying? I didn't say he was wrong, I just said what I believe.

>> ^hatsix

The goal of posting this video was to spur interesting conversations on philosophical topics, but so far everyone (with an exception here and there) seems interested in discussing the same old atheist talking points and ignoring the content of the video entirely.

This is probably because the content in the video was a pseudo-intellectual, pseudo-philosophical sermon that made such astronomical leaps that it didn't need to be said.

The argument that was made, I think, is that if you're an atheist you're leading a double life. On one hand, you are committed to this relativism which makes every value judgment subjective, but on the other hand, you live as though there are absolute values and meaning.

There wasn't an argument made for this. For some reason, you seem to believe that "the things we do in life have no meaning after we die" turns people into sociopaths... And since we're not all sociopaths, that proves that God exists. The first issue is that you assume that 'meaninglessness' leads to sociopathic behavior. Secondly, this is a textbook example of Denying the Antecedant fallacy.

--Skipping the story--

The point being that while it's easy to wax philosophical about these points, no one really lives that way. We all have an idea of what is wrong, and if there is something the way it shouldn't be, then naturally there is also a way it ought to be. Where does that come from?

Is this really your argument? 80% of the people you meet were raised Christian (even most of the Atheists)... This is confirmation bias... You can't say something is put there by God when Religion was preaching to them on a weekly basis. If there really were some sort of imperative planted by God... wouldn't there be far less religious wars?

Breaking news... people really do spend their entire lives 'waxing philosophically'... People do die for things that their religion has told them was wrong, but they felt was right (Anti-Gay Violence?).