Bikerman

Actually it is what i would expect to see. You have an initial disharge into a region of lower charged atmosphere and then 'tendrils' of ch arge 'seeking' the path of lowest resistance, until one grounds out and you get the main discharge.

That is a fallacious argument - ad-populum fallacy (appeal to popularity).It is best to avoid this type of argument all together.Here's a few examples to show why it is often a bad idea.eg.1 There are over 2 billion Christians, and 2 billion people can't be wrong can they? But there are nearly 2 billion Muslims so either 2 billion Muslims are wrong, or 2 billion Catholics are wrong, or all 4 billion are wrong.eg.2. In about 600BCE just about everyone who thought about it was convinced that the world was flat or rectilinear. They were ALL wrong.In this particular case, saying that people all around the world know and talk about dragons is simply incorrect. There are basically 2 'supermyth' versions of dragons - Eastern - derived from the Chinese, and Western - derived from the ancient Greek myths. Unsurprisingly these two 'mother' myths spread as the country of origin spread its influence. Since China and ancient Greece were so influential and powerful, it is not surprising that their dragon myths were incoroporated into other cultures.In fact, this is actually evidence against rather than in support. If the two basic myths were based on real creatures then why are they so different? Chinese dragons are serpent like, whereas western dragons are nearly always winged. Eastern dragons are protectors and seen as lucky and friendly. Western dragons are usually evil or, at best, neutral, and are seen as monsters to be killed by heros.

I think you need to take a long hard look at yourself buddy. How DARE you assume that you have some special knowledge and/or insight and that your religion is true whereas others are not. Arrogant Crap. Personally speaking I'm willing to bet that I know the Christian religion WAY better than you do. We can test it if you like? On matters of core dogma, different sects, biblical interpretation, historical events - you name it. Yet you think that my lack of belief is in someway a handicap and that I obviously haven't thought it through? I say again - arrogant crap. Christianity is full of contradictions and nonsense, so rather than try to convert your friend you should rejoice that he has seen through the nonsense and consider asking his help to do the same. And as for I don't particularly want to hear smartass theists patronising non-theists, but since this is a public forum then I take what comes - you don't get to censor replies or select who can comment.

Watching the antics of various religious leaders over the last few years has been a deeply unedifying experience and has led me to believe that serious conflict between the religious establishment and a largely secular citizenry is becoming increasingly likely. This is something that I, in common with most secular people I know, have little appetite for. Religious leaders such as Carey and Williams for the Church of England and, recently, O’Brien for the Catholic, have made it quite clear that they not only want such a conflict, but that they actually seriously believe that such a conflict Is already underway. Look back at comments on secularism/atheism over the past few years and you see repeated references to ‘militant atheism’, nonsense about ‘'deep forces at work in Western society', which we are told are ‘degrading the values of Christianity’. Christians, we are told, are being victimised and ridiculed routinely by secularists and are being actively discriminated against. I am not cherry-picking, or quoting out of context – those are tricks I leave to the religious apologists who are masters of both. This is a concerted and consistent claim being made by many leaders of Chris6an sects (and, to a lesser extent, echoed by Muslim spokespeople). At first I thought that the charges were so ridiculous and hypocritical that they didn’t actually merit a response, and I was sure that most ‘thinking people’ would see just how self-serving and bogus such claims are. Apparently I was wrong. Numerous non-religious friends and acquaintances appear to believe that the moaning clerics actually have a point. It is, therefore, necessary to respond to this claim in some detail and to demonstrate just how dishonest and hypocritical it is. Let’s start with the basics. Since the claim is discrimination, let’s examine what this claim is based on. I’ve searched for stories which could possibly be seen to represent discrimination against the religious over the last 10 years. I may have missed one or two, and I’m certainly willing to consider any that I have missed, but I make it a total of four stories in 5 years. I’m not going to cover each one because they are very similar, and obvious attemp0ts at special pleading rather than responses to genuine discrimination. I’ll consider one (probably the most widely covered) to illustrate: Cross-dressing at British Airways? An employee of British Airways - Nadia Eweida – conducted a campaign, over 7 years, to overturn the right of BA to specify that she should not wear a religious icon in a visible manner whilst in a public-facing role at work. She went through an industrial tribunal first and lost. She then waited for over a year until BA changed the policy and returned to work, only to then challenge the tribunal ruling and (she hoped) get back the money she spent on the case. BA refused to cough-up and the Tribunal Appeal dismissed her case. She then took it up with the court of Appeal who threw it out, and then again on a separate technicality – which was also thrown-out. She then applied to the Supreme court which refused leave to bring the case and is currently, I believe, preparing to take it to the European Courts. Far from discrimination, the policy of BA was even-handed and quite sensible. Her complaint has been heard by every competent authority and all agree that there is no case to answer. Christians are not required to wear a crucifix and it was made clear to her that she could wear it under her blouse with no problems. Her complaint is basically that she wants the right to publicly display her religion. This is a form of evangelism and. quite rightly, she was refused. To call this ‘discrimination’ is deeply offensive to those of us who actually HAVE been discriminated against (more on that later). This is nothing more than vexatious use of the legal system to cause nuisance and garner publicity. The same is true of the other stories which have come to public attention – from a worker who refused to work on Sunday (as her contract required), a couple who thought they should be free to discriminate against homosexuals in their business and a doctor who claims he was sacked for emailing prayers to colleagues (he wasn’t – check the links at the end). So what we actually have are a few zealots who are upset that the law applies to them, as well as to everyone else, and have screamed discrimination in a tacky and self-serving attempt to gain exemption from such laws. That is it – the sum total of ‘discrimination’ faced by the poor Christians. Now, compare and contrast: I have lost count of the times I have been insulted, belittled and abused for admitting I am an atheist. Over 40 years or so then I guess it is at least 20 times. I have been attacked, spat upon and threatened many times – by Christians of course. Those lovable Christians have also attempted to get me sacked on two occasions, and have written anonymous postings in several forums claiming I am, variously, a paedophile and an AIDS sufferer (both untrue). Bear in mind that I live in England which is extremely tolerant of atheism compared to many other countries – including large parts of the US. In parts of America atheists are routinely beaten-up, denied access to police and courts, and generally bullied in every possible way, up to and including being murdered. To say that Christians are crying wolf is a rather large understatement, and I am fairly sure that they are not even aware of the dangers of this. There may come a day when a Christian actually DOES face discrimination. In that event I would normally be one of the first to side with them, since I am firmly committed to freedom of expression, including faith, and will fight with anyone who is being denied that freedom – religious or not. I have to say, though, that I am pretty reluctant to treat any such complaint from a Christian seriously now, given that every claim to date has been not only bogus but manipulative and gratuitous. One day the Christians are really going to need people like me who are unafraid to stand with them, but they will find that their lies and deception have made it far less likely that such natural allies will; want to stand with them, aware that they may be victims of yet another attempt to gain publicity and gain special treatment. As for the notion of ‘being at war with militant secularists’ – consider that the complaints are usually about Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, the late, much missed, Christopher Hitchens and the philosopher Dan Dennett. These individuals are supposed to be the ‘outriders’ of the ‘new atheism’. The notion that Richard Dawkins represents any sort of existential threat to religion is ridiculous. The worst he might do is persuade people that religion really is as dumb as it appears. In fact the complaint is really about something much more basic. The real complaint is that the secularists are no longer willing to grant a special privilege to religion, as has been customary. There has, for as long as I can trace, been an ‘understanding’ that free-speech is a good thing, and can be used to criticise, satirise, insult and offend anyone EXCEPT when it comes to religious belief. One is not supposed to subject belief to the same critique that one can freely apply to, say, choice of politics, football team, dress, car etc. The sin that Dawkins commits is not to call for discrimination against the religious, but to treat religious belief the same as any other belief and criticise it. The complaint of ‘militancy’ is nothing more than the whining of children who find that the special treatment that they have taken for granted is no longer an automatic right and might not always be granted to them. In fact the complaint is indeed about discrimination –the lack of it. Christians seem to think that everyone should positively discriminate in their favour and not subject their beliefs - ludicrous though they are, to the same scrutiny that is routine for all other beliefs, and even the lack of belief that is atheism. Christians often see no problem in rudely demanding that I explain my atheism, often accompanied by insulting and childish comment from them, asking how an atheist can be moral, how I find meaning in life, why I don’t just kill myself – etc (any atheist will know exactly what I am talking about), but any attempt to subject the religious belief to the same sort of treatment is seen as militancy, discrimination and even abuse. This is beyond silly, beyond even stupid. It is dishonest and hypocritical and deserving of nothing but utter contempt. Rowan Williams (hands-up those, like myself, who initially thought that he was probably a clever academic chap, and have since discovered how wrong we were), George Carey and most especially Cardinal Keith O’Brien are attempting to rabble-rouse in order to preserve the few vestiges of privilege that their benighted nonsense still commands in some quarters. They are liars and cheats and have lost any credibility or right to be taken seriously. More importantly – if they really DO want to turn this into an open fight with secularism then they must be mad. I really don’t think they have the first inkling of how badly they will be defeated and what REAL discrimination feels like. If these idiots keep up the current barrage of complaints then I worry that they may soon find out.   References Carey Whine http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Williams Whine http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ O’Brien Rant http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Nuisance cases http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Real discrimination http://digg.com/ http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

It's real. Yes it is slowed down - sorry, thought that was obvious.

No, I can't see the topic at all :-) Maybe I should have said this was a joke, but I posted it before I remembered :-) LOL

Always CHECK your assumptions (and the assumptions of others, presented as facts) because they will often be wrong. In this case, let's check the implicit assumption that alcohol intake is increasing. Doesn't seem to be the case does it? In fact, this graph is not very useful if we want more quantitative date. Since 1974 alcohol consumption in the US had DROPPED about 40% per capita (niaaa figures for the US Gov - see link below). Now, I bet you thought it had gone up, yes? That is certainly the picture you might get from media coverage....ALWAYS check - that way you avoid arguing about non-existent, or highly exaggerated problems :-) http://pubs.niaaa.nih.gov/publications/Social/Module1Epidemiology/Module1.html

No, I'm afraid linear models of current flow will not be much use. This is a highly complex system of ionised gas/plasma surrounded by continually varyingconductivity as water vapour is driven through the atmosphere. You are going to need some really good maths brains to deal with just the fluid dynamics involved. Theoretically there is no absolute threshold of insulation - remember, we are in quantum-land where Shroedinger's wavefunction takes over and particles can be everywhere, nowhere and both at the same time :-) In real life it obviously depends on how much 'kick' (voltage) you want and, crucially, whether you want DC oir AC. The water analogy is good for the basics of DC current-flow, but not so good for AC and semiconductor theory.... CHeck it out

Sorry but that just isn't true.There are somewhere over 50,000 species of Spider - none of which have two eyes. Then we have many other species of insect, crustaceon and arachnid with more than 2 eyes. Since the function of chrolophyl is to do exactly that, then it would be extremely unlikely to find a plant which possessed chlorophyl and DIDN'T metabolise in such a manner... But that actually tells us very little.

I think you are both dreaming.The only thing going for the US is the low starting base of the main challengers - China, India, Brazil etc. After that the news is all 'bad'.The US currently outspends China about 6 to 1 on defence (total, not per capita) but I don't think it actually matters, even were it not also true that China will, on current trends, be outspending the US within 20 years. The problem for the US is that nobody much takes the threat of hard power from the US as the armageddon that US citizens seem to think it represents - largely because it isn't.The history of the US in exercising 'hard power' is awful. The US has lost arguably every engagement since WW2 (I don't think it is even arguable that it lost in the biggest - Vietnam and Korea).The actual level of military spending isn't so important when balanced against the opposite and much bigger factor - public opinion. It is inconceivable that the US could sustain the sort of losses it would suffer in any open engagement with China - and that is today, not the future - for anything more than the briefest of periods - certainly not enough to win anything decisive. Public opinion is , of course, easy to manage in the short term, but extremely difficult over longer periods, and even the combined manipulative powers of the private-interest media outlets and government couldn't sell a 'major' war with China. Hell, you couldn't even beat a few thousand Muslim fighters in Afghanistan so talk of military superiority over real armies is so hypothetical as to be actually meaningless.

I'm afraid that you don't really have a clue what you are talking about.Here's a tip which will serve you well - don't believe everything you read on creationist sites. YES, as a matter of routine, a provisional age is usually done using the strata where the fossil is found. This is simply because it is a good 'rule of thumb' estimation and is a LOT cheaper than arranging radiometric dating of each sample. HOWEVER, the strata themselves are dated as reference figures using several types of radiometric dating which all pretty much agree. Now, of course, in the field, if an archaeologist is working in, say, a known limestone stratum of rock, he or she can be confident that it is a certain age BECAUSE IT HAS ALREADY BEEN DATED. Finally - where there is any doubt (if, for example, a new and important fossil is discovered) then it, and the strata it came from, would be dated (probably using uranium-lead or uranium-uranium dating). So, unless you actually KNOW something about the subject it is probably better to 'remain silent and be thought a fool rather than open your mouth and remove all doubt'. As for evolution - like gravity evolution is a theory AND a fact. Pretty much everything you wrote is wrong. Yes, people HAVE observed one species turn into another - many times. No, it is not based on guesses or suppositions. No, it has nothing in common with religious belief. No, it doesn't require you to believe it, simply to understand why it is true.

*sighs*Yes, most honey has VERY SLIGHT antibacterial properties - nowhere near the sort of levels you get with, say, a tablet of penicilin.It always amazes me that people are quite happy to put their trust in the unchecked word of other people simply because they have some bizarre notion of what 'natural' means.If you have a bacterial or fungal infection in the eye then honey might well help. It will NOT help with an allergic reaction and, in any case, you would get better results with a standard antibiotic.There IS some honey (Manuka) that appears to have interesting properties with regard to promoting regeneration of tissue - but that is specially produced in New Zealand and is NOT the stuff you buy at the supermarket. The best thing to do with supermarkey honey is put it onto bread and butter and eat it - don't pour it into your eyes or any orifice other than the mouth.

I'm not sure whether you are serious or not, but assuming you are :a) The reason people didn't look for fossils before the 19th century is because they were worthless. It is only after Darwin published 'Origin' that fossils became popular and, therefore, worth something. You can see real dinosaur bones in any decent museum. The plaster-casts are used for a lot of exhibits but if you ask nicely I'm sure you will be able to look at the originals. c) Some fossils are indeed worth a lot of money. The reason you don't hear of such sales is because they rarely happen - museums tend not to like bidding on the open market. Up to 8 million dollars has been paid for dinosaur fossils. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/?toURL=http://www.forbes.com/2001/08/01/0801connguide.html&refURL=&referrer= d) Your entire argument is what we call 'argumentum from incredulity/ignorance and is a classic fallacy of logic. Just because YOU can't answer some basic questions (and the excuse can surely only be lazyness, since google quickly supplies the answers you wanted) doesn't actually mean anything. In Science an opinion is valid only if supported by evidence, and an opinion based on ignorance or incredulity is completely worthless.

A friend sent me this awesome gif of a lightening strike that just goes on and on......enjoy A

The only argument I have seen deployed against it is the 'slippery slope' argument and that is, and has been shown to be, a fallacy. It is actually quite outrageous, when you think about it, that the state would seek to interfere in the agreed business of private individuals who are doing nothing that can or could harm society generally or other individuals specifically. Unfortunately it is within living memory that states enjoyed many powers in these private areas, but we have, quite rightly, been revoking and repealing those powers over my lifetime - such as the power to imprison someone FOR LIFE for having homosexual sex, or the power to insist that all heterosexuals stick to certain methods of lovemaking and do not indulge in others. To most right-thinking people, it is actually quite shocking that the state once took this role, and as someone who has seen such things be torn down, I find the state's role here to be equally outrageous and archaic. Let's be honest - the vast majority of opposition is from religion - yet another example of the harm religion does, even to those who don't believe. Most of the spokespeople I have seen on the media have been either affiliated with, or linked to, pro-life groups or evangelical Christian groups.Just like the current drama here in the UK over gay marriage, where the Church has used vile bigotted lies and insults routinely, and yet gone completely unchallenged because they hide behind 'faith' which, they oddly seem to believe, turns bigotry - a generally agreed bad thing - into a 'position of faith' which we are told is a good thing. I do not see how this can be justified, as I hope a quick analogy will demonstrate: Is a racist who's parents beat him until he agreed that black people were evil, somehow not really a racist ? Can we say that the coercion used by the parents mean that his actions are not 'freely' chosen and therefore not properly the actions of a free person? Perhaps we might try. Can we say that his actions (in, say, hurling racist abuse) were not actually racist? Of course we bloody can't, and the notion is obvious bollox. Of course the racist is still a racist. It may be that, as individuals, or even as a society, we decide that in that particular case the racist should be educated and helped, rather than jailed or fined, but if he screams abuse at Black people it is still racism, and when men in frocks say that homosexuals are deviant sinners then that is bigotry for ALL their supposed 'faith'. So, in short, of course we should be able to seek help from people if we want to die but cannot do the deed ourselves. It is OUR body and OUR life. I find any notion that the state has a 'higher' right to our body/life to be a worryingly totalitarian idea, and I find the idea that any church has a similar 'right' to be infuriating, laughable and ironic in its arrogance - in just about equal measure.

I think you need to be very careful with terms here. Euthanasia and assisted dying are very different. Euthanasia can be voluntary or not - it can, for example, be forced. Assisted suicide (I prefer assisted dying) is, I think, what you mean here - where one person helps another to end their life.

This is just the culmination of nonsense by various people who should know better. The birth-certificate only became an issue when (Hilary) Clinton's over-zealous supporters began an email whispering campaign. Even when the certificate was published various 'experts' said that it had been altered. Nutcases like Alex Jones then leapt on it:http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ who actually IS an expert (rather than the idiot Jones introduces AS an expert) knows that the whole thing is nonsense based on a poor understaanding of software. The fact that the digital document contains 'artefacts' is not surprising - it is produced on Adobe Illustrator and the software automatically 'slices' the document for OCR in exactly the way we observe - and which Jones's 'expert' thinks provides his 'evidence'.Basic rules apply - don't believe what you read on the web unless it is attributable to a REAL expert.

I would be very interested in an astrological reading. I have to be honest and say in advance that I am deeply sceptical about this, but I am open-minded enough to let the evidence be the decider.I am male, 50 yrs old, born 10th September 1961 at 21:52.So, what can astrology tell you about me?

No that is YOUR definition, not mine. I would accept it if it is qualified slightly 'the belief that discrimination is justified by differences in racial traits' or something along those lines. I do note that the use of the word 'superior' is itself a subjective term in most cases and COULD be the basis of racism, but not necessarily.The FACT that, in general, some 'races' are 'superior' to others IN SOME SPECIFIC REGARDS is neither controversial nor, in my opinion, racist. It is a fact that people of the Japanese 'race' are, on average, shorter that people of the (say) caucasian 'race', and I do not accept that either the fact itself, or the statement of that fact, is in any way racist. Now, if I then went on to say that 'because Japanese are shorter this means ......x,y,z' then I might well be making racist statements. For example, I could say 'because Japanese people are shorter, they should not play basketball'. Now that is clearly racist because it generalises in an unwarranted manner,

Sorry but that is a fairly useless way to decide. If someone takes offence at something I say, that does not mean that I intended to offend and nor does it mean that they are justified in taking offence. People take offence far too easily in my experience. Racism is the irrational belief in the superiority or inferiority of people based on race. The important word is 'irrational'. If the belief is rational - based on evidence - then it isn't racist, any more than saying that someone born in Japan will be, on average, slightly shorter than someone born in England. It WOULD be racist to make a generalisation - all blacks are stupid, all Japanese are short. Those are both stupid (irrational) statements that I would clearly consider racist. If people don't like it being pointed out that they are less intelligent then that is their problem, not the person making the claim. It may be considered rude, bad taste, insensitive, boorish, but NOT racist.The notion that science should be restricted to solving problems is a very dangerous one. Who knows what problems the research done today will solve in future. Scientists should be free to pursue ANY line of enquiry they like and limiting academic freedom is a very bad idea indeed. Science can certainly prove such things. Either there is a correlation between racial origin and intelligence or there is not - the difficulty is in devising a measurement that does not introduce secondary factors.

Err... No it is NOT true that 'hypothetical facts' are falsified if a theory is refuted. In fact it is a dumb suggestion. Newton observed things falling at around 9.8 m/s^2. Einstein showed Newton was wrong (or at least very incomplete). Did things suddenly start falling faster, or slower? Of course not. If something is a fact, it is a fact, regardless of the theory or hypothesis that seeks to make use of that fact. As for scientists 'disowning' the BB theory - not really. Like all theories, BB theory is fluid. It is being added to all the time, just like evolutionary theory and every other scientific theory. We KNOW that there is a problem with General Relativity when we get to very small scales - ie into the quantum world. We KNOW that either there are two separate and unmixable laws governing the universe, or one of our current main theories (or both) are incomplete - most likely General Relativity. So what? That is how science progresses: observe, test, refine, test ....

LOL - not this old chestnut again.I'll take this out in several different ways, for fun. First the 'practical' rebuttal: 1) You ASSERT that there IS absolute morality (unproven and actually unlikely), and further assert (whilst claiming it is a deducation - ie it follows logicxally) that absolute morality cannot exist without God. For the purposes of this first rebuttal, I'll concede that latter point (though it is wrong, as I'll demonstrate in another posting). So, let's say you are right and we 'deduce' God from the existence of 'absolute' morality. Does that tell us anything about this God? Not really - could be malevolent, could be indifferent, could be benevolent. No way to tell. What we CAN do is make an educated guess, based on the evidence. Most people who have ever lived have died young, in great pain. Since this God is said to be the source of 'absolute' morality then we can apply this 'absolute' morality to this issue. What would we call a person who could stop people dying in great pain, at no personal cost, but chose not to do so? We would call such a person immoral. It wouldn't matter if the person claimed they had something else more important to do. What, we would ask, could possibly be more important that saving countless people from suffering and death? So the God which you claim to deduce, because you claim there is absolute morality, does not itself feel bound by that absolute morality, and since that morality is, you say, absolute then it follows that God is absolutely amoral at best, and actually immoral on many occasions. Then there is the 'applied' rebuttal: 2) The 'absolute' morality specified by the Christian God (jesus) is actually pretty immoral in most people's eyes. The main message Jesus has is 'take no care for the 'morrow'. We are urged to throw off attachments (including family and kids) and 'follow' him. In other words, one must refuse to take responsibility for one's own material needs and the needs of dependants, and let God do it. I call that both irresponsible and immoral - which is probably why most Christians ignore it. As for the rest of Jesus' morality - he makes it clear that people should obey Jewish Law (Matthew 5:18). That moral 'law' is pretty damn useless. Half of it can best be described as the ranting of a jealous and insecure deity. The rest forbid things that were already forbidden long before the Hebrews came alone - for the simple reason that groups that DO kill each other, or steal without sanction, tend to die out. As a side-point this is why we see similar 'morals' in other social animals. Troops of monkeys also tend to avoid killing each other and stealing from each other. And the Jewish moral law ends with a prohibition on covetousness - which it seems to me is the basis of capitalism. So, what else can we say about this Christian 'absolute' morality. Well, here are some things that are moral (even in some cases required, which would make NOT doing them immoral) according to the bible: Keeping slaves; beating slaves (as long as they recover in a few days sufficiently to walk); murdering cheeky kids (Proverbs 20:20), adulterers (Leviticus 20:10), homosexuals (Leviticus 20:13) and anyone who isn't Jewish (Deuteronomy 17:12, Exodus 22:19, 2 Chronicles 15:12-13) - I'll let you extend that to Christian if you insist; rape (Judges 21:10-24, Numbers 31:7-18, Deuteronomy 20:10-14...and many more) So this is surely some very 5th rate 'absolute' morality that you say exists. Moreover it is obvious to anyone that our present morality is hugely different to that of 1st century Palestine. Sexism, racism, homophobia - all things sactioned in the bible - are no longer tolerable and are regarded as immoral. Nor can you say that the morals expressed in the bible, particularly in the OT, have changed, because you have already asserted that they are absolute (therefore cannot change).......all in all it ends up in a right pickle for the Christian apologist. Then there is the 'semantic' rebuttal: 3. If God is the source of absolute morality, does God give us this morality because it IS absolute? If so then it follows that it is absolute regardless of God, and God is redundant. If not, then morality is just the whim of God and not absolute at all. Then there is the 'self-consistency' rebuttal 4. You assert that absolute morality exists. The only evidence available for this claim is observation of human behaviour which, it is true, does tend to show that certain things are taboo in pretty much every culture examined. These include murder (meaning killing people within the group - which is also how the bible meant it) and theft (again meaning stealing from members of the group). These are best explained in evolutionary terms, without invoking the supernatural. Nonetheless, this is the evidence available to support the claim. BUT that SAME evidence shows that much of the rest of what we regard as 'moral' is not at all consistent across cultures. Certainly it isn't considered immoral to not worship a deity on the sabbath in most cultures. Neither is it considered immoral to lie in all cultures. So the evidence which is used to support the assertion actually refutes it - clearly some, if not most, of our current morality is evolved/developed.

Clearly that is untrue. I live quite happily without any God, and I actually find the notion that 'without God there is no life at all' to be both childish and rather insulting. If God is everywhere, then where is everything else? If God exists at every point in spacetime then there is no spacetime left for anything else to exist in. Bunk. We know what the energies to do with matter are - we can measure them. The 'energy' that moves things together is called gravity. If God were this energy then we can measure it precisely and we find it doesn't vary, so calling such an energy 'God' seems perverse in the extreme, when 'gravity' is much better and gives us useful formulae with which we can make predictions and calculations about how this 'energy' will behave. Once again the word 'God' is redundant. I am me, you are you. We both think we are conscious and the probability is that we ARE both conscious. Introducing another entity (God) actually adds no information. We cannot test the assertion, it doesn't make any predictions about the universe, it doesn't relate to anything we can measure or observe, and it doesn't explain anything that is not better explained scientifically. In short, Ockham's Razor tells us that the concept has to go......

No it isn't racist, but many of the people who have 'asked the question' have been. The problem with the question is that it seeks to correlate two concepts which are not well understood, or are, at best, questionable.Intelligence is notoriously difficult to define, let alone measure. Standard IQ tests claim to do so, but they are always (if reputable) 'norm referenced' - that means that the actual scores are arranged in a distribution around a centre value of 100, so that 100 is always 'average' IQ,Some 'absolute' IQ tests of different races HAVE been conducted and tend to indicate that Asians around the China region score highest, 'westerners' somewhere in the middle, and sub-Saharan Africans at the bottom. The problems with this are:a) The tests used almost certainly test for things other than 'intelligence'. Imagine a genius who didn't know how to read or write. It is unlikely they would score very highly on most IQ tests because they would not understand the questions or how to answer them.b ) The concept of 'race' is difficult to define with any degree of precision, and it is arguably a fairly useless way of categorising humans. When does an 'African' become a European? Is the child of Brazilian woman and English man South-american? European? Braziliian? English?The question is largely meaningless because we are all a product of genes from many areas of the world - and ultimately we all share an African ancestor if we go back far enough (only a few tens of thousands of years),So, whilst I think that it is fair enough to ask the question, I would be deeply suspicious of any answer one received and would examine it carefully to see how it defined 'race' and how it tried to avoid bias and secondary effects in measurements of 'intelligence'.

Myth is too strong. There are several hypotheses (better word) which involve multiverses of one sort or another. It is true that, as yet, there are no tests available for these hypotheses so they remain hypotheses and are not 'theory'.One, however, is pretty widely accepted amongst physicists - the Everett Many World interpretation of quantum mechanics. This basically 'solves' the 'collapse of the wavefunction' from probabilistic to deterministic by positing that each possible quantum event is not probabilistic but is instead certin. The upshot and noddy-version would be :- everything that CAN happen DOES happen, but each possibility spawns an entirely new universe. Although it might sound mad, it is probably the most widely accepted interpretation of the results we get from quantum mechanics and it is supported by such scientists as Tegmark, Hawking, Penrose, DeWitt,Deutsch and many more.