>> ^shinyblurry:

Lilith was never in scripture and was written about over 1000 years after genesis. It was written as Jewish folklore, and developed mostly in the middle ages. Today it is particularly embraced by pagans, gnostics and radical femenists. It's yet another lie, out of millions, that tries to derail the Creation story and that people buy into without doing any research. There is no lilith conspiracy..she never existed.
>> ^xxovercastxx:
@0:34 "Ever since the earth's first woman..."
bzzt! Eve was the earth's second woman.



incorrect.

Well that's odd. You see, just 3 nights ago, God spoke to me in a dream and told me that, while it's true that her first appearance in writing was around 500AD, her story is nevertheless legit. She was Adam's first wife, made from the same earth as Adam.

>> ^shinyblurry:

Lilith was never in scripture and was written about over 1000 years after genesis. It was written as Jewish folklore, and developed mostly in the middle ages. Today it is particularly embraced by pagans, gnostics and radical femenists. It's yet another lie, out of millions, that tries to derail the Creation story and that people buy into without doing any research. There is no lilith conspiracy..she never existed.
>> ^xxovercastxx:
@0:34 "Ever since the earth's first woman..."
bzzt! Eve was the earth's second woman.

>> ^shinyblurry:

Lilith was never in scripture and was written about over 1000 years after genesis. It was written as Jewish folklore, and developed mostly in the middle ages. Today it is particularly embraced by pagans, gnostics and radical femenists. It's yet another lie, out of millions, that tries to derail the Creation story and that people buy into without doing any research. There is no lilith conspiracy..she never existed.
>> ^xxovercastxx:
@0:34 "Ever since the earth's first woman..."
bzzt! Eve was the earth's second woman.



Bzzt! No, I'm sorry. The answer was "It's a Long Way to Tipperary." So close! Thanks so much for being on our show!

Johnny, why don't you tell him what the parting gift is?

Lilith was never in scripture and was written about over 1000 years after genesis. It was written as Jewish folklore, and developed mostly in the middle ages. Today it is particularly embraced by pagans, gnostics and radical femenists. It's yet another lie, out of millions, that tries to derail the Creation story and that people buy into without doing any research. There is no lilith conspiracy..she never existed.

>> ^xxovercastxx:
@0:34 "Ever since the earth's first woman..."
bzzt! Eve was the earth's second woman.

Oh, okay, so you believe everything you read. That's not very intelligent, or at least it's not very SMART. The bible was written hundreds of years ago, and has since been translated and re-translated to and from dozens of different languages. Individuals and groups in power throughout different points in history have taken it upon themselves to modify the bible, adding and omitting pieces here and there to suit their agenda. They knew that gullible sheep, unable to think for themselves, are easily swayed by religion, and what better way to control a populace than by attacking their very basis for the way they live their lives?

God pre-exists everything. We know God exists because He lets us know, and He would let you know that if you sought Him out. The New Testament was written 2000 years ago. The Old Testament is at least 1000 years older than that. We have copies of the early manuscripts so we know what the original bibles looked like. So the translations today are accurate, and this idea that they are corrupt is just outright false. Yes, man has used the bible for evil ends, but this is no different from anything else man does. The very reason that Jesus Christ came to Earth is because man is so desperately wicked and needs Gods redemption.

Additionally, if one is intelligent, and they believe in ancient myths, obviously they're going to be some of the greatest minds the world has ever known, right? That's why all the geniuses of the world are devout Christians or whatever religion you want to name, right? WRONG.

NASA is not run by rocket scientists who go to church on Sunday. Great inventors and genius-level individuals such as Stephen Hawking are not religious specifically BECAUSE they are intelligent. They are able to think for themselves, not be told what to think.

Some of the greatest minds in history were devout Christians..and some of the greatest scientists:

Francis Bacon - Originated the scientific method
Johannes Kepler - Laws of Planetary motion
Galileo Galilei - Father of modern astronomy
Nicolaus Copernicus - Heliocentric Universe
James Clerk Maxwell - Electromagnetic field
Neils Bohr - the Atom
Louis Pasteur - germ theory of disease
Rene Descartes - Philosopher and mathematician
Issac Newton - Invented classical mechanics
Max Planck - Founder of quantum mechanics

A lot of modern science is built on the backs of Christian thinkers, as you can see, and that is just a short list. Today, around 10 percent of scientists believe in God. At least 50 nobel laureates believe in God. Now, if you want to talk about great thinkers, how about Albert Einstein? He believed in God. Although not a Christian, here is what he had to say about Jesus:

"To what extent are you influenced by Christianity?"
"As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene."
"Have you read Emil Ludwig’s book on Jesus?"
"Emil Ludwig’s Jesus is shallow. Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot!"
"You accept the historical existence of Jesus?"
"Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life."7

Of course, religion and science are completely unrelated topics, and one does not have to be non-secular in order to be a scientist, but typically, the two mindsets would conflict, as religionists base their beliefs off of emotion and other irrational concepts. Scientists use a thought process, experimentation, and ruling out possibilities in order to come to conclusions and figure out FACTS about the universe around us. There are scientists who believe in the possibility of a god, but it takes a different form than that of some all-seeing being that created everything. I'll never try to explain that to you, though, as you're too blinded by foolish nonsense that has been force-fed to you since childhood.

I will leave you with this though: Adam and Eve. Here's some fruit. I'm going to tempt you with it, and then create a snake to TALK to you and tell you you should eat some of it, and THEN I'm gunna come back and be all "OH SHIT WHAT THE FUCK?! I SMITE THEE FOR ALL ETERNITY!!!" just to fuck with humanity. Wow. You worship a pretty evil, and vindictive force. Why would you want to do that? The fucker's up there just fucking with us like a little kid with a magnifying glass over an ant hill. Jesus christ, you must really enjoy misery. I'll take the reality of humanity surviving on our own acquiescence and compassion over that bullshit any day!

I base my belief off of personal revelation. I was an agnostic my entire life and raised without religion, and I was a secular humanist and a strict materialist who didn't see any evidence for God or spirit. God woke me up to the truth and let me know He is real. If you want science facts, you only have to examine the first page of the bible:

In the beginning (TIME) God created the heavens (SPACE) and the earth (MATTER)

And God said, “Let there be light (ENERGY),” and there was light.

It took mankind 3000 years to catch up and figure out the Universes foundation is based on these principles. There is also no better description which uniquely fits the big bang theory. Creation ex-nihilio, which is creation from nothing.

The serpent you're referring to was Satan. God put the tree there because He gave mankind free will to follow His commands or not. He also warned them of the consequences if they ate of the fruit. Adam and Eve decided to disobey God and believe the lie because Satan promised them they would have Gods power if they did it. So, instead of trusting God, they lusted after His power and betrayed Him. That's why they were kicked out of the garden. Their sin brought death into the world.

No, God didn't damn us for eternity. It's the very reason God sent His son Jesus to die on the cross, to save us from this fate we created and redeem mankind. So we could have eternal life with God again in the Kingdom of Heaven. We are sinners, and the wages of sin is death. Gods gift of salvation is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Netrunner don't know if you read sci-fi but there is a great book co-authored by Arthur C Clarke about this concept. It's called The Light of Other Days and is all about wormholes. Highly recommend if you've any interest.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^rottenseed:
Well we're playing with radio waves which is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Now, I don't know what makes radio waves so special when it comes to transferring data. I mean aside from the fact that they're harmless to us (large wavelength, low frequency, low energy) there's nothing inherent about tuning into those frequencies. Imagine too, that radio waves travel at light speed. That's the fastest we know ANYTHING to travel. If were to pick up a transmission that was sent a thousand years ago, that solar system could be as good as gone by now.
well maybe not a 1000 years...unless it was their last cry for help.

Right, that's why I'm thinking radio isn't the ultimate communication medium. Maybe there's something else more exotic that doesn't get weaker at a geometric rate, and is less susceptible to noise, and who knows, maybe even breaks the speed of light.
Drake's equation sorta assumes that there's some basic level of communications technology that civilizations develop relatively early in their lifespan, and then use continuously for the remaining duration of their existence.
I think that's a bad assumption. I doubt we'll still be broadcasting radio waves in a thousand years, let alone a million.

>> ^rottenseed:

Well we're playing with radio waves which is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Now, I don't know what makes radio waves so special when it comes to transferring data. I mean aside from the fact that they're harmless to us (large wavelength, low frequency, low energy) there's nothing inherent about tuning into those frequencies. Imagine too, that radio waves travel at light speed. That's the fastest we know ANYTHING to travel. If were to pick up a transmission that was sent a thousand years ago, that solar system could be as good as gone by now.
well maybe not a 1000 years...unless it was their last cry for help.


Right, that's why I'm thinking radio isn't the ultimate communication medium. Maybe there's something else more exotic that doesn't get weaker at a geometric rate, and is less susceptible to noise, and who knows, maybe even breaks the speed of light.

Drake's equation sorta assumes that there's some basic level of communications technology that civilizations develop relatively early in their lifespan, and then use continuously for the remaining duration of their existence.

I think that's a bad assumption. I doubt we'll still be broadcasting radio waves in a thousand years, let alone a million.

>> ^NetRunner:

More seriously, I've always felt like Drake's equation is missing something. What if there is some way of communicating across interstellar distances that's better than radio? What if the amount of time that civilizations take to make radio obsolete is ridiculously short, like only 100-200 years?
Maybe the sky is humming with all sorts of signals...that we haven't yet developed the technology to hear.


Well we're playing with radio waves which is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Now, I don't know what makes radio waves so special when it comes to transferring data. I mean aside from the fact that they're harmless to us (large wavelength, low frequency, low energy) there's nothing inherent about tuning into those frequencies. Imagine too, that radio waves travel at light speed. That's the fastest we know ANYTHING to travel. If were to pick up a transmission that was sent a thousand years ago, that solar system could be as good as gone by now.

well maybe not a 1000 years...unless it was their last cry for help.

>> ^Mcboinkens:

This is so ridiculous I can't even really take the comparison seriously. Not discovering the Americas earlier in the history of Earth was mostly due to our own ignorance. We though the world was flat, and assumed nothing else existed. The vikings are alleged to have made it to the Americas much earlier than Columbus, even.
On the other hand, physics is holding us back in space. Sure, if we learn how to bend spacetime or use wormholes we may have a shot at getting off earth, but it's silly as hell to think it will actually happen within the next 1000 years or so. By that time, we'll probably all be extinct already.
Terra-forming is out of the question, it would be impossible in anything but science fiction, and the only reasonable planet we could even do it to is Mars, which we can hardly get a probe to that worked successfully. Will we make progress? Yeah, definitely. But to think we'll leave this planet is absurd. The only hope for humanity is progress in renewable energy, population control(limiting births, not promoting genocide)and learning to accept other people for their culture and religion. The faster we figure that out, the better off we'll be.
Also, that west wing clip was flat out dumb. Sending men to Mars would do nothing for us but inflate our Space-peen. There is literally nothing to gain from sending humans there rather than robots. It is riskier both cost and liability-wise. The only thing remotely useful would be setting up a base, which would require huge funds, and a ridiculous amount of new research. Plus, they really wouldn't be able to do much once it was set up. We already know the atmosphere, composition, and features of Mars. What would a man do?


First, the issue of whether or not the earth was flat was pretty much settled by Pythagoras in the 6th century BCE. Columbus had so much trouble drumming up funds precisely because anyone who knew anything about cartography (i.e., the Portugese) knew that he was either lying or suicidally deluded. We don't know why Columbus thought what he thought, and we probably never will. Perhaps he believed but could not prove that there HAD to be something between the Western coast of Ireland and the eastern coast of Japan. As for why no one else tried it, you're right. Others had. Don't forget that there is strong evidence of others visiting the Americas prior to the Vikings. Given how many Polynesians must have given their lives to map out the ocean currents that led to the fragments of rock jutting out of the ocean, it was apparently something intrinsic to the species, but no longer as strong a yearning.

And I never precluded the use of robots to get us where we're going, at least initially. I do think that there is tremendous hubris in the fields of science when it comes to what we know and what is left for us to discover. It does seem like there's a lot of space out there, and the distance which once seemed so insignificant to the early sci fi writers now seems insurmountable. I take Pascal's Wager (or at least the fallacious logic that drives it) and say that the actions we must take to get us out there would benefit the human race as a whole far more than it would hurt. To give up would be to surrender to a nihilism quite endemic in the species. Consider for a moment the construction of the cathedrals. Would such populist public work projects even be possible in this day and age? Would the average Joe be willing to start a project, knowing that he would not be able to live to see its completion? If we don't get off this rock, I blame that attitude far more than I blame the laws of physics.

To get back to the present topic, it's possible that the railgun technology being developed could serve as a kind of propulsion, but it seems as if they've worked out the mechanics of the propulsion, and only need to get the scale down pat. They know how to send something really fast, but they want to weaponize it, to better kill at a distance, an attitude that has never won us many friends. As a result, I'd pull money out of this program.

Finally, I cannot really respond to your dismissal of a manned trip to Mars, because it's clear that you don't see what I and so many others see. Maybe it's a simple matter of me being that Polynesian sitting on the shore of Rapa Nui, wondering what other islands were out there. You, on the other hand, would rather we invent some better way to catch fish, or to figure out what to tell people so they don't chop all the freaking trees down and doom us all to a nasty population crash. Your instinct and my instinct don't run contrary to each other, as long as I'm willing to plant a few trees on my way out to sea. What you learn and what you do help me to do what I want, and what I might learn would benefit you and what you do.

[redacted]

The government(s) in the U'S' is defective that's for sure and it does not look like there is a cure for such a terminal situation. Many great societies, most of them now gone, burnt like a light bulb giving out leaving the world to fend for itself for 1000 year stints before some revival of order. This one is close-"Not in my lifetime" is beginning to seem more and more like denial-some are already to the anger stage of this realization.

Don't necro 1000 year old memes please.

fap...fap...fap...

1000 years later: fap...fap...fap...

There's the whole temporal aspect of the issue. Who knows how long we'll be using electromagnetic radiation for communication. Perhaps in like, 100 to 1000 years we'll have invented some new method. Maybe we'll have changed so much by then that our current conceptions of technology and existence won't even be relevant anymore.

Say there's been, like, 1000 intelligent, space-faring species throughout our galaxy since the beginning of the universe. If we assume it took them roughly as long to evolve as it took to get complex life here on earth, we can assume that the first intelligent aliens took flight perhaps a billion years ago. And then, at even intervals a new species develops a technological society. Even with 1000 intelligent, technological species in our galaxy alone, there'd be like, on average, a million years between them. Chances of two of them evolving at the same time are relatively small. And even if they used radio-signals for like 10,000 years, before becoming something that we can't even conceive, or destroying themselves, that would still be an average of 990,000 years of radio-silence per 1,000,000 years. Thus, if we stick around even for thousands of years, we still only have a tiny, tiny chance of ever picking up a radio-signal from another intelligent species.

Hi Maeric. (Sorry I accidentally sent this to you privately I think.) Think of the last 200 years of progress and what vast changes in thought that has brought. Then think then of the next 1000 years and how differently people will see this mystery then. Who knows what will be common knowledge then. For the mean time, my personal response to this mystery is to learn as much as I'd like about whatever I want, enjoy my life, stay out of everyone else's way, try to help eliminate suffering and try to promote general education so that the human race as a whole gets smarter over time, even if I miss out on the future revelations. That sits fine with me and I enjoy tripping on the mystery.