>> ^bmacs27:

>> ^Boise_Lib:
>> ^bmacs27:
I'm pro-nuclear with almost any modern nuclear technology. In fact, if there is anything I'm against, it's preventing the creation of new capacity that could replace old nuclear plants (and maybe more importantly coal plants).

The main reason that Uranium plants were promoted was because they produce Plutonium for bombs. Still all for them?

You didn't seem to understand what I meant by modern. I'd like to see most of the currently operating nuclear plants taken offline and replaced with things like breeder reactors, or passively safe designs. I am for repurposing weaponized material for fuel however, and burning the "waste" problem in reactors that can use them. I haven't crunched the numbers, but I'd wager burning coal has released more radioactive material over the course of human history than nuclear power plants.
Or we could keep waiting for technologies that don't exist while we blow up our mountain tops to burn our coal. Your choice.


I'm sorry for the glib response.

Uranium fission still produces Plutonium and a don't trust that all of it will go into power production. Burning coal probably has released more radioactivity than fission plants (slowly and widely dispersed), BUT fission has produced huge amounts of long-term, radioactive waste which is haphazardly stored in an unsafe manner. If even one of the many storage pools is breached the release will completely swamp all other releases of radioactivity by humans.

Fission runs on Uranium enriched in U235. The same process can enrich Uranium enough to make a bomb. Plutonium is produced which can be used to make a bomb. The whole Uranium fission process was originally engineered in order to make bombs. Thorium reactors have never had proper government backing to be developed enough to produce power--any connection between these two facts?

>> ^Boise_Lib:

>> ^bmacs27:
I'm pro-nuclear with almost any modern nuclear technology. In fact, if there is anything I'm against, it's preventing the creation of new capacity that could replace old nuclear plants (and maybe more importantly coal plants).

The main reason that Uranium plants were promoted was because they produce Plutonium for bombs. Still all for them?


You didn't seem to understand what I meant by modern. I'd like to see most of the currently operating nuclear plants taken offline and replaced with things like breeder reactors, or passively safe designs. I am for repurposing weaponized material for fuel however, and burning the "waste" problem in reactors that can use them. I haven't crunched the numbers, but I'd wager burning coal has released more radioactive material over the course of human history than nuclear power plants.

Or we could keep waiting for technologies that don't exist while we blow up our mountain tops to burn our coal. Your choice.

>> ^CelebrateApathy:

Get up off your couch, walk to your bathroom and look in the mirror. Be honest, If you woke up tomorrow and could all of a sudden do the things this man can, you would likely think you were bitten by a radioactive spider and had become a superhero. It truly is amazing what the human body, even sans gamma rays, can accomplish.

I'd be pissed off that I didn't get a useful superpower.

Get up off your couch, walk to your bathroom and look in the mirror. Be honest, If you woke up tomorrow and could all of a sudden do the things this man can, you would likely think you were bitten by a radioactive spider and had become a superhero. It truly is amazing what the human body, even sans gamma rays, can accomplish.

bannanas are radioactive. FYI.

>> ^Asmo:

While Westy is coming off as a half assed dimwit (how unusual), Eve really is an acquired taste with a learning curve like climbing a wall covered in razor wire, shards of glass and radioactive killer land sharks...


That actually sounds more fun than the demo of Eve I tried.

I could not get into how the ships flew around. While I understand the way they modeled it is what's needed for their netcode, it was way too simple and well, 'Just click.. then click.. then click.. and you're there!'. I even noticed ships passing through the warpgates(?) don't really care about the architecture of the gate. They'll fly right through structures.

I'm sure there's some great other aspects to the game, but I need some sense that I'm actually flying something.

While Westy is coming off as a half assed dimwit (how unusual), Eve really is an acquired taste with a learning curve like climbing a wall covered in razor wire, shards of glass and radioactive killer land sharks...

The best evidence is just filling in the gaps in science.

I'll have to disagree with you here. To say the evidence for a creator is just filling in the gaps isn't true when it is a better explanation for the evidence. Take DNA, for instance. DNA is a complex coded language which contains grammar, syntax, phoenetics, etc There is no naturalistic explanation that can account for it; DNA is information, and information only comes from minds. The medium doesn't matter. Just as a message transcends the paper and ink it is written in, and just as you can write that message in the sand and has no loss of data, DNA is transcendent of its medium. A designer is a better explanation for the existence of DNA. Check out this article:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/3040594/The-Linguistics-of-DNA-Words-Sentences-Grammar-Phonetics-and-Semantics

What happened before the Big Bang? I don't know. "God did it" isn't evidence, it isn't rational or logical. "God did it" used to be the explanation for the shape of the Earth and the movement of the stars, when that was questioned, the questioner was threatened with death. However, by continuing to question, we now know a lot about the solar system, enough to put satellites into orbit and photograph distance planets.

That is just a fallacy, though. Just because people used "God did it" as an explanation for things we know understand in more detail is not evidence against the existence of God. It is just evidence for the ignorance of people. Christians aren't against science. I am against things which aren't science, like things which have never been observed and are untestable, like macro evolution.

Scientific theories are indeed interpretation of facts and in many cases, it involves jumps because we can't explain everything. This is what the word "theory" means in this context, rather than the meaning the Fox News's of the world use when they pretend it means that science is guessing. That's why there is always doubt, always questions to be asked and answers to be listened to. The important thing is that it is interpretation and extrapolating data, i.e. it is based on what we can prove.

Science does a lot of guessing. This is why theories have changed so many times in the last few centuries. Not too long ago, science was certain the Universe was static and eternal. It was one of the evidences that atheists would use against Creationists. Now, we know the Universe had a definitive beginning. The scientist who discovered said that there is no other theory which lends itself so well to the creation account in Genesis.

My main point is that science has nothing to say about the existence of God. It is not anything it can prove or disprove. God is a spirit, and a spirit is an immaterial being. There is no empirical evidence for something immaterial.

However, some answers have been listened to and fallen short. For example, Intelligent Design. This has been discussed and no rational, logical or empirical evidence have been put forward. This is why it has been rejected, by me and by the scientific community: not because we don't want to hear but because it's been talked to death, causes distracting controversy and frankly, it's clearly bullshit. I wouldn't want my child taught it in school because if you teach one unsubstantiated load of nonsense, where does it end? I want rational and logical things taught to my children. If I want my children to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I will teach them myself and when I struggle to explain the dinosaurs and radiocarbon dating that they learnt about in school, I should take a long hard look at myself.

Again, intelligent design is a better explanation than natural selection by random mutation for a number of things. When darwinian theory was created, the cell was thought to be a simple ball of protoplasm. We now know the cell is more complex than the space shuttle, by an order of magnitude. There is no naturalistic process which can account for the existence of this complex and intricate nano-machinery. Just because you consider it "bullshit" doesn't make it so. The Universe has the appearance of design. There are 30 or so factors in physics which have to be precisely calibrated for the Universe to even form correct, let alone for life to develop. The odds of this happeneing by chance are beyond calculation. Instead of admitting that and changing the theory, scientists then postulate multiple Universes to make the design features in this one seem plausible as happenstance.

Here is a nice video on the complexity of the cell:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSasTS-n_gM&feature=related

If you want to talk about radiocarbon dating, this again is something which is an interpretation of evidence based on a number of unprovable assumptions. It presumes that radioactive decay rates have remained constant in the past and that there was no contamination over periods of millions or billions of years. Check out this article:

http://biblicalgeology.net/blog/fatal-flaw-radioactive-dating/

I do rely on empirical evidence, we all do. You are relying on what you see too, what you see written on the pages of the Bible. Short of Descartes' "I think therefore I am" philosophy, everything we think exists is empirical. If we can't believe what we see or what we consider to be self evident, how can you believe what you think you are reading from what you think is a Bible?

I am relying on my own experience, and in my experience I have observed that the material reality is a veil, and behind that veil is a spiritual reality which encompasses it. I have seen the evidence of a higher power working in the world, who relates to us on a personal level. I believe the bible because my experience confirms it, not because I just assume it is true.

Is believing my own eyes and my own mind what you want to call my religion? That seems to be to be very different to religion as I know the word.

When you have faith in metaphysical claims, and that faith informs your entire worldview, that is indeed like a religion. What you are seeing is through the lens of that worldview..

>> ^Quboid:
I haven't seen any good evidence for Christianity. I haven't seen any good evidence for the existence of God. The best evidence is just filling in the gaps in science. What happened before the Big Bang? I don't know. "God did it" isn't evidence, it isn't rational or logical. "God did it" used to be the explanation for the shape of the Earth and the movement of the stars, when that was questioned, the questioner was threatened with death. However, by continuing to question, we now know a lot about the solar system, enough to put satellites into orbit and photograph distance planets.
Scientific theories are indeed interpretation of facts and in many cases, it involves jumps because we can't explain everything. This is what the word "theory" means in this context, rather than the meaning the Fox News's of the world use when they pretend it means that science is guessing. That's why there is always doubt, always questions to be asked and answers to be listened to. The important thing is that it is interpretation and extrapolating data, i.e. it is based on what we can prove.
However, some answers have been listened to and fallen short. For example, Intelligent Design. This has been discussed and no rational, logical or empirical evidence have been put forward. This is why it has been rejected, by me and by the scientific community: not because we don't want to hear but because it's been talked to death, causes distracting controversy and frankly, it's clearly bullshit. I wouldn't want my child taught it in school because if you teach one unsubstantiated load of nonsense, where does it end? I want rational and logical things taught to my children. If I want my children to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I will teach them myself and when I struggle to explain the dinosaurs and radiocarbon dating that they learnt about in school, I should take a long hard look at myself.
I do rely on empirical evidence, we all do. You are relying on what you see too, what you see written on the pages of the Bible. Short of Descartes' "I think therefore I am" philosophy, everything we think exists is empirical. If we can't believe what we see or what we consider to be self evident, how can you believe what you think you are reading from what you think is a Bible?
Is believing my own eyes and my own mind what you want to call my religion? That seems to be to be very different to religion as I know the word.

radioactive spiders are biting the felines!

This guy was bitten by a radioactive dickhead.

Ha--I wrote this before I saw your tags.

This thing was obviously bitten by a radioactive teenager.

An excellent question. The answer is, Japan has a religion, and that religion is Japan itself (nationalism). Yes, Shinto is there, but AFAIK, it's mostly ceremonial.

The Japanese have a very strong family-oriented culture with clearly defined roles and a nearly homogenous society. They also have a concept of honor unheard of in the West. Disgracing one's family name by stealing or rioting would be inexcusable.

Unfortunately, the Japanese are, IMO, still too trusting of authority in times of crisis.

I never claimed that Christianity is the only way to instill values, but because a tenet of generic Christianity is that it's the "ONLY" way, I can see why one might think so.

When God is "killed" the State becomes God, and a murderous one at that. The only majority atheist countries spared mass slaughter have traditionally religious cultures or strict cultural values. Right now England has neither, and because the population is unarmed, they are subjects of the crown, not citizens.


>> ^SDGundamX:

>> ^quantumushroom:
I agree with this guy 99%. He is not a cock. Of course, watching an atheist angered by a lack of morality in the populace is hilarious. People didn't regularly act this way 40 years ago. What changed?
Not everyone proclaiming to be a Christian follows Thou shalt not steal all the time, but more of them have values than the ones raised with....NOTHING.
Sorry Atheists, without those funny Bible stories/sermons/morality plays, you have no vehicle to deliver your values, which oddly mirror Christian values in so many ways.

Riots don't happen in Japan, either--a country where less than 1% of the population is Christian. Don't you think the Japanese have 1000 times more reasons to riot than these guys? Many people in the tsunami hit areas are still living in school gyms, without air conditioning in 90+ degree weather. They have no work, no homes, and not a whole lot of hope. Meanwhile, a 20km radius in Fukushima is uninhabitable and will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future. The people who used to live there are basically homeless--they can't claim insurance on their homes because technically their homes haven't been destroyed. And it's not just people in northern Japan that are being affected--radioactive food is "accidentally" getting through inspections and being consumed by the general populace.
Most have never heard of the ten commandments here. 80% of the population are atheist. Yet there are no riots, no looting, no violent demonstrations. People are angry, but they are working peacefully towards solutions to the problems through grassroots campaigns. So my question for you is, how do you reconcile these facts with your belief that only Christianity can instill morality in people?

>> ^quantumushroom:

I agree with this guy 99%. He is not a cock. Of course, watching an atheist angered by a lack of morality in the populace is hilarious. People didn't regularly act this way 40 years ago. What changed?
Not everyone proclaiming to be a Christian follows Thou shalt not steal all the time, but more of them have values than the ones raised with....NOTHING.
Sorry Atheists, without those funny Bible stories/sermons/morality plays, you have no vehicle to deliver your values, which oddly mirror Christian values in so many ways.


Riots don't happen in Japan, either--a country where less than 1% of the population is Christian. Don't you think the Japanese have 1000 times more reasons to riot than these guys? Many people in the tsunami hit areas are still living in school gyms, without air conditioning in 90+ degree weather. They have no work, no homes, and not a whole lot of hope. Meanwhile, a 20km radius in Fukushima is uninhabitable and will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future. The people who used to live there are basically homeless--they can't claim insurance on their homes because technically their homes haven't been destroyed. And it's not just people in northern Japan that are being affected--radioactive food is "accidentally" getting through inspections and being consumed by the general populace.

Most have never heard of the ten commandments here. 80% of the population are atheist. Yet there are no riots, no looting, no violent demonstrations. People are angry, but they are working peacefully towards solutions to the problems through grassroots campaigns. So my question for you is, how do you reconcile these facts with your belief that only Christianity can instill morality in people?

And here I am thinking it's a waste of time to care about this because it's a fictional character.

>> ^Yogi:

I don't get it. Spiderman died so another guy rose up to take his place. Basically it's a fan of his copying his deal, he doesn't have the same powers cause radioactivity sometimes messes up when it's bestowing you your powers.
I don't get the issue here...but it is fun calling everyone who cares a Fucking Racist!

I don't get it. Spiderman died so another guy rose up to take his place. Basically it's a fan of his copying his deal, he doesn't have the same powers cause radioactivity sometimes messes up when it's bestowing you your powers.

I don't get the issue here...but it is fun calling everyone who cares a Fucking Racist!