Bikerman

http://electronicsclub.info/cmos.htm

Well, there is some evidence that it actually IS the diet and no so much the activity..http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10545542 Obviously your basic point is correct: if calories-in minus calories-out>0 then you put on weight..

a) There is nothing dodgy about any of those links.b ) If you took an hour to 'read' what you say then that is not so good, since you haven't read the key trials and you haven't understood what you have read.c) I seriously doubt you would know a scientific paper from sandpaper, so I return to my previous conclusion that you are a troll, and stick the ignore back on.

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrology https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/893697 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v318/n6045/abs/318419a0.html (if you don't have a subscription then the experiment is summarised HERE http://psychicinvestigator.com/demo/AstroSkc.htm https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18649494 http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/mar102009/641.pdf

No, it is quite factual. They disprove that astrology has any meaning within the examples that they examined. Since you have no counter-studies to show that astrology DOES have any validity then it is safe to assume that the specific studies can be generalised. And to me, people who are prepared to believe any old nonsense without proper evidence are gullible twits. That is just unsupported assertion. Show me some evidence that 1/4 of a good sample of people guess your star-sign correctly and it STILL does not say astrology works - it simply says that those people identify elements of your personality that conform to some particular statement of what one would expect from a particular star-sign. That is not a test of whether it works, since to do that you would need a sample of more than 1 person. It is quite possible that a particular Sagittarean (to take an example) may indeed appear to fit a general picture of what a Sagittarean is supposed to be like - and many will not do. This proves nothing. Without details of any such study then your opinion is just that - unsupported opinion. Because of the fairly obvious reason that Astrology is based on fiction. The notion of planetary alignment depends on what you call a planet. Did astrology change when it was decided that Pluto is no longer a planet? Does astrology change as our measurement becomes more accurate?Besides which, the Sun and moon both have noticable effects from an objective point of view. We can measure light levels, tides, gravitational pull etc. Notional alignments of planets have very little measurable effect - zero as a good first approximation. Fine - placebo effect (power of suggestion) is very possible, but that doesn't mean there is any truth to it. Whereas I can talk from the evidence of numerous properly conducted scientific studies. So what we have is numerous studies vs your opinion. And you think that believing the studies is ridiculous? Hmmm....

Yes, astrology can be regarded as a scientific hypothesis (not a science, since it doesn't have a coherent area of study). As a scientific hypothesis it makes predictions which can be tested. The result of testing is that it doesn't have any validity at all. Astrology is the process of making the general sound specific and hiding the sleight of hand with 'techical' talk which is actually complete bollox. It tells you nothing about the future. What it does is provide a focus for consideration of a scenario and that very focus is what generates the supposed personal evidence. It is no different from the i-ching or reading tea-leaves or crystal-ball gazing - there is always a focus for the woo-woo - in the case of Astrology the focus is on a bunch of scientific-sounding terms which are actually just pseudo-scientific tooth-fairy science.

a) Newtonian mechanics still works - Einstein merely extended it to cover 'extreme' cases where speed approaches c. If you want to do a ballistics, trajectory or force calculation on earth you use Newton.b ) Hawking's speculation about information in BHs is NOT a theory, merely a hypothesis. The uncertainty is known and understood, as is the conjectural nature. c) Science makes no claim to certainty - you are confusing it with religion. The rest of your posting is the same jibber-jabber as previously and not worth responding to, with a couple of exceptions: When I say you lie, I mean it literally, eg Blatantly untrue - pretending to specific knowledge which you do not possess and assuming that nobody will call you on it. Bad luck. You don't know anything of the sort since you don't know what the terms mean.Induction is where the premises indicate a conclusion but do not necessitate it. The conclusion is therefore probable but not certain. Deduction is where the premises necessitate the conclusion. The conclusion is therefore certain. eg Premise : She looks over 18 yrs old. Inductive conclusion - She IS over 18 yrs old. Premises : a) All dogs are members of the family Canis lupus familiaris b ) This animal is a dog. Deductive conclusion - this animal is a member of the family Canis lupus familiaris All this 'working up' and 'working down' is simply jibber-jabber. As I have already said you don't understand the very basics of science and logic, so you have no hope of commenting sensibly, let alone critically on anything. Finally. Hogwash.Evolution is supported by : Genetics 1. We can trace the chromosomal differences between species back logically to form a phylogenetic tree. The method used - Cladistics - makes no prior assumptions about genetic relatedness and can easily be tested. 2. DNA, RNA and proteins found in known living systems all have the same chirality. RNA has four chiral centres giving a possible 16 stereoisomers (16 different versions of the same molecule). DNA is similar, as are the proteins. We only EVER find 1 version in all living things which is strong inductive evidence for common descent. Again this is easily tested - find any living thing, or readable DNA with a different chirality. 3. Of the 102 naturally occuring nucleosides, ALL life uses only 4 (deoxyadenosine, deoxythymidine, deoxycytidine, and deoxyguanosine) to synthesise DNA. Again strong inductive evidence for common descent, and again testable. 4. The way in which information is encoded in the 4 nucleosides is universal. There is no a-priori reason why this should be the case, unless there is common descent from a single basic coding system. Massively strong inductive evidence for common descent and easily testable. There are other more detailed lines of evidence - including protein and DNA functional redundancy, transposons and endogenous retroviruses, but you lack the basic science grounding to understand these and I lack the time or inclination to educate you further. Biological features Atavistic and vestigeal features. The fact that many animals display vestigeal features is well documented - we have a vestigeal tail (the cocyx), whales have vesigeal limbs - as do dolphins and snakes. There are many other examples of such features - down to the molecular level - which provide compelling evidence of gross changes in morphology which are entirely consistent with evolution, entirely inconsistent with creation, and which fit exactly into the phylogenetic tree meantioned previously. All of the above are also predictive - if a new species emerges then it can be predicted to obey all the above rules. If a new fossil is discovered then it will conform to the phylogenetic tree (or evolution is falsified). If fossilised DNA/RNA is discovered then it will have the 4 nucleosides in the exact chirality of all other life and will use the same encoding pattern. Direct observation There are many observed speciation events where scientists have actually witnessed the evolution of a new species (despite what creationist literature likes to claim). Examples would include : maize, S.malheurensis, houseflies, gall former flies, apple maggot flies and drosophila. And I haven't even mentioned the fossil record which is the icing on the cake. Creation accounts for none of these observed features and can predict nothing. So no, evolutionary theory is NOT dependant on inductive reasoning - even if you knew what the word meant.

I cannot agree with you about emotional damage. Using that criterion you can outlaw huge areas of free speech. The Catholic is emotionally damaged by the nasty atheist saying there is no God; the Muslim is emotionally damaged by anyone insulting Mohammad...and so on.

Indeed. I am not someone who would defend many atrocities committed by my countrymen over history. That is, of course, hypocrisy and not free speech. Free speech means supporting those who say things you find abhorrent.HOWEVER, we accept certain limits on free-speech. We accept, generally, that incitement to violence steps over the boundary. We also have the concept of 'hate speech' which is broadly defined as singling out a group because of some difference that they are born with and belittling/demeaning them because of it. In an ideal world neither of these restrictions would be necessary. We would be able to rely on the good sense of people to see through the fallacies employed in such rhetoric. Unfortunately history teaches us that people are not so good at doing so and that hatred and division can be entrenched if such hate-speech is not challenged. For that reason I reluctantly support the ban on hate-speech - I wish it were not necessary but I feel that it is. I would not, however, extend this, as it has been in some cases. For example, I would not make 'holocaust denial' a criminal offence, as it is in some parts of Europe.

More lies? You haven't done any research on Calvin or you would know something about him. You don't, ergo you haven't. Calvin wrote extensively on Baptism, as anyone who has researched would know.http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Calvin certainly believed that Baptism was a necessary step in 'joining with Christ'. His difference with Catholicism was in the interpretation of Original Sin - Calvin maintained that children would go to heaven whether they had been baptised or not. As I said earlier, you are a deeply ignorant troll, and you have been caught out quite a few times with this sort of lie. I must admit that I do find a pleasant irony. It seems to me that the more fundamental a religious person is, the more dishonest that are. Not just you - this applies to the majority of creationists and Islamists that I have come across. I always wonder whether they think God will overlook the lies and that the end justifies the means....interesting that they choose to take the bible literally, but don't think that applies to the 'bearing false witness' bit... I have long believed that cognitive dissonance is the only possible result of believing in creationism, and this does tend to support that hypothesis....

As I said I have frequently stuck up for Islam when it has been unfairly picked-on. I post on a few forums and have frequently been on my own trying to defend the religion against all-comers. Of course I don't believe that all Muslims are terrorists and the distinction between Islam and Islamism is important. What does worry me, and has done since 1989 (Salman Rushdie) is the willingness of people who are otherwise good citizens and decent people, to go along with this Fatwa idea for people insulting the religion. I have very close personal experience of this - I lost a good friend over it. He could not see that disagreeing with Rushdie was fine, but threatening to kill him was not. This is the area of conflict and it isn't negotiable. We in the west will never give up the right to free speech and it looks like many Muslims continue to misunderstand or ignore it. That is the one thing where I will not compromise one inch. it is the one concession to our laws that I DEMAND Muslims make. it is not too much to ask. Nobody is forced to watch or hear offensive things and everyone has the right to organise and protest, but nobody has the right to start screaming murder. I tell you seriously, I attended one of the protest rallies in London over the Rushdie affair and some of the Muslims on the 'other side' were ridiculous, embarrassing and scary all at the same time. I was embarrassed to call myself a fellow citizen of theirs. [media http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/[/media] I know that these people were a minority - but I also know that their basic views were NOT. Those views will have to change I'm afraid.

All over the place as usual. First death takes time then death can be instant, then some confused rubbish about instant still giving time to repent. You mangle theology and logic and now you are mangling English and my will to live... Romans 6:3 “We who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death” Different day same crap. You haven't a clue which verses contradict it, and you think that St Augustine definitions invalidate the authenticity of the concept, which tells us either you haven't read the bible passages I suggested or you didn't understand them. I merely say that if the one in quadzillion chance comes up and there is a God, then we have his record already in black and white. Millions of murders, conspiracy to rape, incest, torture, false imprisonment, kidnapping, robbery with intent, genocide and, uniquely, he is also charged with several steps up from genocide - Genocide is when you wipe out a good number or all of an ethnic group. God did it to every ethnic group at the same time. I don't even think there is a word for it...mass murder is not nearly sufficient....humanocide? Omnicide is probably close. We know about his character - narcissistic, vicious, sadistic, pompous, insecure, childish & quite stupid. If he were a man we would put him in a high security mental hospital and make sure he never escaped... That's pretty factual, not at all emotional. I don't believe there is such a person or thing, so naturally I can't get worked up over mythical actions. What does wind me up is people who buy into creationism and similar woo-woo nonsense. It gives my species a bad name. If our neighbours ever DO actually land on earth then we are going to have to explain how we can have nuclear fission and be working close to a solution on fusion, yet we still have people with bizarre illogical refuted and physically impossible beliefs. I'll be so damned ashamed.... What fiction? That experience of death and destruction was common all along the coastline of first contact. It wasn't the piddling little few thousand I used - I wasn't trying to play it up - rather the opposite. The real thing killed over quarter of a million people. That simply proves you are a troll. You don't know who Calvin is, you haven't read any Luther or Calvin and yet you pompously declare what they argued or did not argue for. Calvin obviously doesn't qualify as an early Church father to someone with your mastery of theology and logic, but for mere mortals such a I, who have to put the effort in and read the books, the Calvin is exactly the definition of an early church Father. Calvinism was pretty important - ultimately that is the root of most US religion - certainly Presbyterian and Reformed churches. The fact that you don't know Luther makes you ignorant and not someone who should be seeking to pontificate on religion. It is like saying you are a poet who hasn't heard of shakespeare - Possible, of course, but likely to be talking through his *bottom*.How many times is this, I wonder, that you have done this? I wonder if anyone has counted... Basically matey you are a Walter-Mitty character. I don't think you actually know the difference between reality and laa-laa land and you certainly don't get the basic concepts of logic and honesty that we use in the real world. No I would like everyone to get their own choice and pretty soon the science you know nothing about will make that a reality, barring your God bumping them off in an earthquake or other 'act of God'. I can't be bothered with the rest of this tripe...

It is the difference between having thousands of people milling around getting in each other's way and an organised army of people all knowing what they are doing. The latter is likely to be far more efficient - multiple times more.

Limit? Why should I limit science? You don't understand the basics of science and everything you have said to date is pretty much gibberish. You don't understand the difference between axioms and premise and hypotheses. Scientific theory = pretty damn certain. A scientific theory is one which all the best scientists in the world have had a go at - trying to tear it apart - and failed to do so. It is backed by multiple strands of evidence from multiple disciplines and can be falsified at any time with just a single measurement - but it has survived. And what do you offer against theory? A self-contradictory myth from several thousand years ago that you keep reinterpreting but still can't make any sense out of? You also confuse the problems of induction and deduction. The are actually very few assumptions in the BB theory and all of them make predictions which can be and have been tested. That's the thing about science - if it can't be tested it isn't science - we call it pseudo-science or religion. So when the big bang theory says - take the temp in space and you will find it is around 3 degrees absolute - and we take the temp and find 2.7-3 degrees absolute that is good. Then when the theory says - hang on we should be getting a lot of em interference because of the initial state - and a couple of decades later scientists discover exactly that interference then that is good And the theory says - you should observe x amount of hydrogen and y amount of helium and z amount of silicon - and so on - and we do indeed observe those amounts, then you have something approaching a theory. Not enough by a long chalk, but it would take hours to list all the supporting evidence and there is no real need. Yet another lie. You are just making it up as you go. First you say that no other use of Yom is associated with a number - lie. Then I tell you that is rubbish and there are 200 such uses. Now you claim to know these, after denying they existed. Finally you try to invent some spurious distinction relying on not 'belonging to a group?' More nonsense. Exodus 20 contains the word Yom used with an ordinal in exactly the same type of grouping, as does Deuteronomy 9. You don't know what you are talking about, which I can forgive, but just lying your way out of a hole? Nah, that's not be tolerated. Genesis 1:3-5 is all that is needed. I don't have to rely on the first argument (even though it is water-tight) - this alone is sufficient. Evening + morning = Yom = Day.Clearly it cannot mean 'period of time' because he has defined it as morning+evening. QED You present nothing logical because you don't recognise logic when you see it. The fact that the author didn't bring the sun in until later is your problem, not mine - that is what it says. it is wrong. Your excuse is that whenever it is wrong you have to make something else up...circular argument. This bit of the bible is wrong => BUT The bible is not wrong therefore you have interpreted it wrong => THEREFORE An interpretation which is possible is the only correct one => THEREFORE I will invent one that works and twist it to fit. => THEREFOREThe bible is correct. It's the nightmare example of the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy - and so obvious I am certain that my 12 year old nephew would spot it in seconds. But as I said you wouldn't recognise logic if you fell over it. The passage is illogical - deal with it. If it is illogical it is wrong. That is the way we do things. You don't get another go, there are no mulligans. Clearly they can exist without the sun. Anything can exist when you are God. It just isn't logical to use the words before you describe how they come about. Unfortunately the author didn't think it through and didn't know enough about cosmology to realise his mistake. It is not a mystery, it is just wrong. They either contradict scientific theory or not. You obviously don't know what begging the question means either, or you would see that since I haven't asserted my conclusion in the premise, then it is not begging the question. Logic 101.What I have done is show WHY it contradicts scientific theory - seeds before sun; wrong sequence of animals & plants;e completely wrong sequence of object creation. It is wrong in so many ways. No that is just what YOU say, not the bible.The bible says "In the beginning God created __ the heaven and the earth". If you want to say that there is a significant gap between this 'beginning' and the next bit ('And the earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters') then you need to remember what we said about photons. So here we have no light or heat therefore the waters do not exist because they are ice. No matter if you say there is a gap of a day or a billion years before 'the spirit moves', it makes sod-all difference because the earth is a black ice-ball for that period. Err...you are arguing that the genesis account is accurate, and now you say that the appearance and order is biblically explainable. Do you know what a tautology is? Do you actually know anything at all? It explains nothing because it is, like the rest, cretinous nonsense. No sun = no life. Simple like so. It doesn't make any difference. You can't have the earth before the sun - doesn't work. That one mistake blows it to bits. Repeating a lie doesn't make it true. Evolution is at least as well supported evidentially as the theory of gravity. Care to bet your life that the theory of gravity is wrong? Go jump of a high building and test. When you make statements about scientific theory they mean precisely nothing because you don't understand the theory in the first place. It is typical of creationists to blithely assert that this theory is wrong and that theory is weak, when they haven't the foggiest notion what the theory actually is. In which case Genesis 1 is scientifically wrong. QED again.There is no straw man, just someone with straw for brains trying to pretend he isn't talking nonsense. 'Extreme scientific definition' is more gibberish. If they could see then it was light - photons with a certain frequency. There is no such thing as an 'extreme scientific definition'. The word 'extreme' is completely misused and redundant. I make no assumptions at all. I can easily demonstrate the difference between visible light and heat, and I can repeat the demonstration as many times as I like. I've realised that I'm giving you far too much credit by bothering to continue to read your gibberish, when it is increasingly obvious that a) You don't know your own bible b ) You are not honest c) You haven't a clue what science is all about and d) You think that because you invent something it is true or logical... Troll or Moron?....I can't decide, but neither is worth more effort... try pictures, might be easier.... [media]http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/] [media]http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/] [media]http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/] [media]http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/]

Sorry, I didn't realise where you were writing from - and I absolutely agree that the threat in your part of the world is more immediate from islamic extremism. I know that we are hated by Muslim extremists (and I have to be honest and say that I also know that some of the reasons for that hatred are real and valid).I would say don't get too caught up in the hysteria about the threat of terrorism to you personally. I know that might seems easy to say from the UK, but actually we have been living with the threat for many years - don't forget the IRA were bombing us long before Ismalicist terrorism became a big issue. I'm not minimising the danger but, to put it in proper context, it is slight. To be honest I can't find any reliable stats on deaths in India due to Islamicist terrorism so I can't get an accurate picture, but I can give you a picture based on the UK. In a really bad year - 2005 when we had the London bombings - 56 people are killed by terrorism. In most years none are. Put that in perspective - 22 people drowned in their own bathtub last year, 258 accidentally hung themselves, 80 died from falling off a ladder....those are the sort of probabilities we are looking at. Tragigic for every victim of course, but not something that keeps me awake nights...

They did have methods of grabbing the blocks with large tongs (the marks are still visible on some blocks) which implies they also had a method of mechanically assisted hosting. They didn't have block and tackle technology, so it was probably just a wooden A-Frame and brute strength. They would certainly have had some method of braking - very easy to rig something up to do that job. Remember also that, contrary to old opinions, it is now thought that the workforce were pretty professional, not just a ragtag army of slaves. Some Egyptologists think as few as 10,000 people would have built the major pyramids.

I don't disagree with much of that. My view that Christian fundamentalism is more dangerous is based on the fact that Islam offers no real threat to the west unless we choose to make it one. Militarily the Islamic states have nothing to threaten the west with. Socio-politically the same is true. The hysteria about muslims migrating until they become a majority is overblown.Fundamentalist Christians, on the other hand, undermine the very things which give the west that relative immunity from religious domination. They undermine science and education.Which is more scary - fundamentalist Christians setting policy for the West or fundamentalist Muslims flying planes into buildings? To me it is the former.Thunderfoot sums it up pretty well I think in the following:[media]http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/]

I have a couple of french dictionaries..any use ? It really depends on what it loaded when you get it. Ther keyboard may be english and that is the only hardware that might be a problem. Windows will just need the correct language pack installed, and other than this you should have no problems. If the keyboard IS French then that is more problematic, but I'm feeling it won't be...wait and see.. :-)

Well, religious extremism like Islamism* and creationism certainly thrive on ignorance because they require ignorance in order to be believed. There are a very few creationist scientists - and they are mostly quite sad and ridiculous figures. Creationism is just SO wrong that it contradicts just about every science at some point. Evolution is actually quite a minor clash compared with the clash with physics (the king of the sciences). They have to propose all sorts of nonsense to make the rag-tag story even partly credible and educated people see through it pretty quickly. Likewise Islamism. It makes claims which a decent high school student can prove are nonsense, so it relies on ignorance. Don't educate women and only educate boys in Madrassars where they learn very little science and concentrate on the Quran. It isn't an accident that there is no technologically advanced muslim country by the way. In the early-middle ages Islam was the light of reason and science. Then the fundamentalists got to power and now Islamic countries are mainly backward dependants. *Islamism as opposed to Islam is the radical version where the believers seek to impose Islam on everyone. O-B-Laden and other Wahabbi muslims, Mujahadeen, Taliban - they are Islamists - not the ordinary honest muslims on the street. I think they are misguided but only in the same way that I think Christians are misguided. I do not hold any ill feeling towards reasonable people, religious or not, and I have several old and valued Muslim friends. I cannot say the same for creationists and Islamic fundamentalists. I fervently hope they die out soon (naturally, I should quickly add,.....I don't wish anyone dead), because of the damage they both do to society. And I'll tell you something that might surprise you - between fundamentalist Islam and Christianity, BY FAR the most dangerous is the latter, not the former.

Chaos doesn't 'reign' but it is relatively easy to create a sphere, even in a chaotic system. Water, for example, has surface tension - ie the molecules attract each other. The optimum way to arrange water (or for it to arrange itself) is in a way where the minimum number of molecules are not surrounded by others (they all pull on each other). That arrangement is what we call a sphere. Put some water in space and wait- you will soon have a sphere. https://stevespeeves.wordpress.com/2006/12/26/youtube-nasa-video-of-zero-g-water-sphere-experiments/

The first thing to do is see if you can tell what any term is going to be in advance. For that you need to generalise the pattern into algebra. You have already put it into words so it is easy. Any term is equal to the previous term multiplied by the current term. In algebra that is an = a(n-1)*n This is known as a geometric sequence. I'm not going to spoil it by going further - the whole point of maths is to play with the patterns and see what deeper 'truths' you can find... * Just as a spur, think about the numbers 1,2,6,24,120 a bit more, and look at the algebra. These numbers are called 'factorials' which can be expressed another way {1*2*3* ... *n}

Interesting...I work more on live sound than Midi (or I used to - not done any professional work for three of four years now).The last album I worked on was Soca/Reggae.. Here's a bit from the album (fair use will permit this much :-) // link dead //

Ahh OK, I get you. Yes, it was worth explaining in that case - I was just puzzled because I thought I was missing something and, though I'm certainly not a mathematician, I can normally cope with the physics guys and gals over at my home forum (except when the particle physicists get onto their pet theories and start invoking E8 symmetry groups, or Lie groups - then I nod then a yes and get out quickly :-) )

Huh? In what way is your method different? Yes, you are cancelling units, but only because they DO cancel, having a common element (beats). It is just a longhand way of writing the same sum: 90 b/m * 3 mins =270 b Writing the longhand cancellation isn't required because we are already working with the same base unit (mins). If they were different then obviously you just insert the correct conversion multiple...I don't see what you are doing different...maybe I'm missing something...

I don't want anyone to roast anyone - I'm not nearly sick enough to wish that upon my worst enemy. There is no conflict of interest between me and God because I actually exist. My observations relate to the mythical God of the bible and are based on what you, and others, say said about him - why you think my interests are conflicted by that I don't really know. How is someone given the chance to change when they are dead? The cases I am talking about are natural disasters where thousands of people, whom God could save, die. Are you suggesting that they can somehow reflect on their lives whilst dead? Why do you assume they might need to? Does it follow that they are guilty because God refused to save them? Says you. Funny how the more zealous the christian the more certain they are of what is biblical - or perhaps not. The concept of original sin is certainly biblical, or rather it is as biblical as most of the rest of Christian beliefs and theology. Romans 5:12-21, 1 Corinthians 15:22 and Psalm 51:5 give the concept a biblical grounding, and the fall of Adam and Eve is the obvious origin. The fact that the Old and New testament are at odds on the matter is not a surprise, or shouldn't be to anyone who has read them. Different Gods, different audience, different times, different religions. Well since I started the topic I think I know what was in my mind....It certainly is a dilemma and emotion has nothing to do with it - why would I get emotional about something I don't believe exists? I do get a bit miffed when people give silly answers to questions, and assume that they know my mind better than I do...but I won't let it spoil my day :-) The Tsunami was very real, The people who died were very real. There was no fault on their part and certainly no fault on the part of the children, yet they died by the thousands and, despite what you believe, many Christians believe that the unbaptised do indeed go to hell - amongst the people believing in this would be many of the early Church leaders - like St Paul, Augustine, Martin Luther, John Calvin... Citing the OT isn't much use because it only refers to Jews, not the rest of the people on earth, since they were the chosen people and they were the only ones who could be saved anyway.The main reason I didn't want thousands of people to die is not selfish, it is simply the wish that nobody should die in those circumstances. I would like to see everyone die in old age, during sleep. This has nothing to do with the fact that the God you profess belief in doesn't give a hoot about the suffering and death that he causes.* * And if you believe in a powerful creator-God it follows that such a God could intervene when and where he chooses. The fact that he doesn't is 'explained' by you as being down to his timetable. I repeat - that makes him a beaurocratic, selfish, inconsiderate, unfeeling, uncaring monster. The nearest analogy would be....ermm..Ah yes...the Vogons. Contradicts? In what way...I don't think you need much analysis to work out what I am saying - that the Christian God is a monster, not a God of Love. Were you confused by me asking you to tell me why you think he is a God of Love? I thought it was a straightforward enough sentence, and how you imagine it contradicts my previous statements completely escapes me. Well if you care to point out the flaw then I'll see if I can answer it. Right now I see no such illogicality. Huh? When was this? I must have missed it, and I certainly haven't complained about it. The contradiction seems to be in your mind, not in my words. Why would I complain if your God did something good for humanity? If he appeared during the next natural disaster and stopped it from killing thousands of people do you really think I would be whinging at him? I would be delighted. The fact is, he doesn't. He could, but, as you say, he hasn't got time right now and the people don't have an appointment.