shadowx

This cannot work. Ever.The way your internet connection works is like this:There is a coper wire that goes from your house, to your ISP let's say this wire can carry data at 10mb/second (it cant.... not in throughput anyway... but whole other topic...) and then from your modem you have wireless or a wire that can carry data at, let's say 50mb/s. All you are doing here is changing your little connection, over about 1 millisecond, to 100mb/s it really has no effect at all. Ever. You cant speed up the copper wire between your modem and your ISP. You simply cant. It's like having a dead end road 5 houses long and living at the end with a 5mph speed limit and the road off of yours is 30mph, you can drive at 100mph done your little 5 house road if you want but you really wont have speeded up your journey home because you are still limited to 30mph for 99.9999999999999% of your journey distance. The only way this would have any effect is if your PC was slower than the network around it in which case your pc is so old that the programs would run so slowly you wouldnt notice the difference anyway.The differences in the speedtest.net results are simply fluctuations caused by network traffic, server traffic and the time of day etc.... Network traffic changes every second, its not static so fluctuations happen.The only other way to speed up your internet connection is simply to use compression (which is what a modem does anyway) so if i have a 100mb file and can compress it to 50mb and send it to you i dont actually speed up our internet connection but it will arrive in half the time compared to not compressing it. This is how the internet works. You can increase the max server connections in download programs and firefox which might give you a 1% speed increase purely due to the limitations of the server of the software but you cannot *ever* speed up your connection to the internet.

Personally i would just buy a new router. You could get one for $50-$100 so personally it seems well worth it. But if you are adamant about fixing it here are some ideas.... Firstly instead of restarting the whole computer (which is a perfectly good idea but...) go to your start menu and type "cmd" in the run/search box and click on the CMD option. I apologise if this seems patronising but i dont know how experienced you are with computers, if you know what to do then just use command prompt to release and renew the DHCP lease, if you are unsure then read on type in "ipconfig /release" in the black box (without quotes) Wait a few seconds and a new line will come up something like C:\> Now type "ipconfig /renew" without quotes In a few seconds your pc should in theory get a new DHCP assigned IP address. If this fails then it is likely the fault of the router, however you can try restarting the computer and see if that helps. If it does help then it may not be the router, but if you still have issues then it *is* the router. Next step would be to check that DHCP is running. You can try using telnet to get into your router's terminal. To do this on win7 you first need to enable telnet (or download something like "putty") Follow These Instructions to enable telnet. Using telnet or putty connect to your router. Open cmd again and type "telnet 192.168.1.1" (192.168..... is your routers IP) Type in your username and password, probably the same one used to access the web control page. Now try typing "netstat -tupl" it may or may not work, depending on what commands are enabled on your router. If it does work then it should in theory show you what internet services are running, i would imagine this should include DHCP. If it does work and it shows DHCP as down or having issues then there is your problem. Personally i think this may be due to one of two things: The router's software is just playing up due to high demands of newer technology, or the router is playing up due to "different" requests from Win7 than the software it was designed for. If im right then really there are only a few options. The best IMHO is to replace the router with a higher speed one. You could possibly get a combined router/modem to eliminate points of failure too. The second is to somehow update the router or change the way windows works with it. The third is to find a way to restart the DHCP service, or simply deal with having to restart the router. In telnet its easy once you are connected and logged in to just type "restart" and you'll get a quicker reboot. Personally i would advise getting a new router. IF it is your ISP that supplied it originally then phone them up and request a replacement. Cite a competitor offering a similar service and also offering a free router/modem and "persuade" them that you want a new one.

Ah a broken Wii controller! Perfectimo! What part is broken? IF it is only the motion sensor (IE it works fine with shooting games and can therefore use the IR capability) then you can use it to make an infra-red touchscreen

You need to post more before your mycents will start counting. If you reach 10 posts each being longer than 5 lines and you still dont have any MyCents then post again asking for help. I believe it is simply that you dont have enough postcount yet. This stops silly spammers earning MyCents before the mods can stop them.

You will need to use PHP or something to make this work. Im sure its possible in JS but you will spend weeks and weeks making it work with JS. PHP is relatively simple on the other hand. Using PHPMYADMIN and an SQL database you can import the data directly from a CSV file created by excel. Then you need to make a PHP/HTML frontend to search the database... Its not a solution but search it out and you should be able to make it (or find someone willing with more time than me!) but it is possible.

Just to expand on this...PHP is a backend language. It never sees the light of day, all it does is spit out other languages and HTML is the one used to create webpages (usually) so you will also need to learn HTML and some CSS in order to be able to create webpages with PHP.Also beware that using a large image for a background will make your website slow to load, it is advisable to only use a tileable image (IE one that you can copy and paste next to itself and not notice the joins) or even better to use coloured areas with carefully placed images arranged using CSS as image backgrounds generally look old and tacky

PAHA! I win! 4gb RAM Quadcore, 1.5TB HADD I know someone will come along and beat me but until then i will bask in my glory [The PS3 is probably the more powerful machine, and yet i dont feel the need to get one. Admittedly im not a huge gamer (though those PC specs are for my gaming PC...) but something just doesnt pull me into the PS3. *shrugs*I like technology because i can make it work! I work in IT and there is so much you can do with a computer that isnt obvious from the surface and that's what i like about technology. Making it do things that other people dont know about

With regards to the theory that everything has a cause and you can trace this cause backwards... IF you believe in the big bang theory then it can be said that at the exact moment of the big bang EVERYTHING was decided. Every particle that was spewed out had a straight line to follow. The only way this can change is by collisions or forces acting on the particle. Each of these collisions and forces can also be traced backwards to the singularity and hence EVERYTHING is already "fated" to happen.However, if we throw life into the equation we get something very different. Humans have sent material out of our planet through the solar system. Through the butterfly effect this could have tremendous consequences and it is something the big bang did not do on it's own. The BB did indeed make the humans who then made these changes but the humans are sentient. We can make our own decision based on events in life, our morals, teachings etc... and these things cannot be predicted or fated by the big bang in any scientific way. If there was no life in the universe then you would argue that fate exists. Each particle and energy "packet" was sent on a pre-defined course by the BB and it's interactions are 100% calculable given enough computer power. However, any simple life can affect the course of particles and the flow of energy. For example me freezing a pack of peas has taken energy from the sun and stored it in my freezer. Hence i have changed the flow in a way that *i* decided, not the big bang. But without me or the peas that sunlight energy would hit the earth and depending on the rotational position of the earth been reflected out into a specific part of space or absorbed into dark rocks etc...So i do believe in free will. However, it is an un-provable concept, either way. I also believe to an extent in fate. For example if a 100km comet is going to smash into the earth then that is fate. From the very moment of the big bang it was decided that a comet would be formed and sent on a trajectory that leads it into the earth. We can however change fate by changing the course of the comet etc....

Does something need a conscious to be able to create? Pure energy that turns into matter and expands to form planets etc... does not need a conscious mind or be guided by one. It simply is the way the universe works. There are some things that cannot be divided further into explanations. For example the fact that quantum entanglement occurs (two particles when passed close under certain conditions become entwined. If you do something to one, eg change its spin, the other immediately and instantaneously over any distance through any obstacles, will spin the opposite direction.) we cannot explain that and i dont think there is an explanation so we must just accept that it happens and that's how the world is. The same goes for the creation of energy and matter. IMHO we can just accept that it happens and that's how the quantum world works. There is no reason for these actions, it just happens. According to the human mind this is impossible. Everything has a root cause or reason. However this does not mean that the universe works this way, only that our understanding is flawed and limited. This is, i believe, the reason for a god which is said to have started the big bang and/or made the universe from nothing. He replaces the "it just happens, that's how it works" with a more understandable and comfortable explanation. Not necessarily the higgs particle, i meant others known sometimes as Weak Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) of which neutrinos are a member. These are formed in the sun and every star. Billions upon billions a second and stream in all directions. In abandoned mine shafts that go perhaps kilometres deep, scientists have constructed sensors which consist of a large sphere filled with heavy water from nuclear reactors, and has inner walls studded with very, very sensitive light detectors. Perhaps once a day one of these neutrinos will interact with the heavy water and blast an electron off of one of the atoms due to collision (i think...) this electron gets excited and must return to its "ground state" so if an electron has an energy of 1 then this interaction gives it the energy of 5 but the electron is unstable at this high energy and so must release 4 "energy" units to return to a comfortable, stable state. And it does this by releasing light energy. This is the same way the LEDs work. This light is then detected and they have then detected a neutrino. Now, given the huge amount of neutrinos that hit the earth every second, you could calculate the number that pass through the sensor per day, and i can assure you it is must, much higher than one per day. Hence the rest are travelling straight through the sensor, which is perhaps 1km under solid rock, and then presumably through the earth and out the other side. Almost like an x-ray goes through flesh. I cant be sure how this works, it could simply be that they somehow slip through the space of the atoms but more likely is that they have no mass. This is a hard concept to imagine but basically they almost dont exist. If it was a tennis ball and someone through it at you it would go straight through your hand and you wouldnt feel a thing. It *is* there but yet it isnt.... Almost like a ghost in the traditional sense where it passes through any object. Why some of them do react i cannot answer, perhaps some fluctuation affects their properties. It is interesting though. The quantum world is literally magical. Particles can pass through any object in their way, they can almost communicate through any object, over any distance with no time lag at all, no medium through which the information passes and yet it *does* pass from one to the other. Particles can just appear and disappear. Electrons do not orbit their nucleus they flash around it, popping into and out of existence rapidly, sometimes not being anywhere other times an atom with one electron could appear to have 10 as this one electron is in *10* places at one moment in time. What the hell is happening there? There is too much stuff we dont understand and stuff which we have theories about that can easily explain all sorts of things. It can provide a slightly scientific theory for the existence of any god or goddess, of ghosts, magick, prayer... all can be explained by the quantum world. How this world interacts with the macro system i dont know. These properties at the quantum scale do not work in the larger universe. The only seem to work at the tiniest of levels.

Avast and comodo are both 100% free for life, no hidden costs at all. I dont know if they offer optional extras... If they do they are completely unnecessary. The free setup is perfect for home use. The only time you would need more is in a corporate environment where you need remote management etc.... Download and try them, if you dont like them then uninstall them. They are both easy to install and remove with no additional stuff like adverts etc...I can assure you if they had annoying adverts or hidden charges i wouldnt be using them. I believe in 100% free software

Hello there Read the Xisto Readme to learn about the forum rules and earning system for mycents and hosting and enjoy the forums. If you have any questions just ask away, the people here tend to be fairly good with answers!

When i referred to zero point energy i actually meant vacuum energy. As much as i know wiki isnt 100% accurate the pure fact that it is "open source" makes it, on average, more accurate, unless you happen to visit after some moron has made an untrue edit knowingly. You are right in thinking that vacuum energy violates the idea of a constant amount of mass-energy (thanks for the new word rvalkass ) however, on a quantum scale rules can and often are broken. One particle can be in many places at one moment in time, or it can be in *no* places at that moment, effectively popping into and out of existence which is contrary to the general laws of physics but anyway...I cant explain how these particles and their associated energy fit into the system. It could just be a false theory that is yet to be debunked nut it is interesting. Quantum physics can pretty much be used to prove anything, including god or an afterlife but again, i digress... Does that mean that if i supply energy to a mass of metal the metal *must* expand, even a tiny bit, to hold that energy? If so does that mean that if i got a one tonne block of steel. *exactly* one tonne and of a fixed size that is accurately measured, and i then use an extremely strong magnet to magnetise this chunk of steel by passing it back and forth that my one tonne block of steel will increase in size and/or mass? Magnetic energy is after all energy and you say energy takes up space so by that definition the steel has to expand to "absorb" the energy like a sponge. If you dont like the magnet idea than what about if i apply 1 million volts to the steel? will it expand? I would suggest heat however heat does cause matter to "expand" in the sense that the bonds between the atoms become further apart to allow for the increased movement. According to my interpretation of the multiple universe theory every universe is made of "matter" and "energy" much the same as our one is. However the matter and energy (henceforth "stuff") in the other verses is fundamentally different to that which exists here. Personally i think it has different vibrational frequencies which mean it cannot exist here or to put it a better way it does exist here, however its vibration is so great or slight that our instruments and senses cannot pick it up. Matter is mostly empty space. One example was the average church building , if the nucleus of an atom was the size of a tennis ball in the very centre of the building then its electrons "orbit" along the walls, and if we assume that the atom in question is hydrogen i would guess the electron would be the size of perhaps a golf ball. Think of all that empty space!!! This suggests that in fact matter can pass through matter... but anyway... It's a bit off topic but im trying to show how very little of physics makes sense and how this allows for, but doesnt prove, various theories of spiritual entities etc... I still insist that any god must be made of something...be that energy or matter it *must* be made of something. Everything is made of something (except subatomic particles which, as far as we know, are the smallest you can get and the building blocks of everything). This doesnt mean that god must be physical, indeed it depends how you describe physical.. Does it mean you can see him through a telescope? Touch him? etc...It doesnt need to. If the multiverse theory is true then he can be in another verse but still be physical. If it is not true then he could be made of some energy or matter that we dont know of yet, or may never know of. I am a scientific person with spiritual beliefs and as such i believe in energies and the afterlife but i also understand that even spiritual and metaphysical "stuff" must be made of the same stuff that exists in this, or another, universe as the universe (or the omniverse if we are talking about multiple universes) contains EVERYTHING. Gods, spirits, entities, energies *everything* regardless of whether we can detect it or not. hence IMHO the big bang would need to occur before any god could exist. This doesnt rule out a god, it simply means he was created by the universe, as everything is. The ultimate power here isnt a god, it is the universe. Perhaps that is what/who you refer to when you say god, even though you do not know it. Just an idea... You have way too much time on your hands, find a hobby or something i joke, i respect you for doing so, not many people have or would. However.... with relevance to the rest of that paragraph i would counter that the "eyes" on the disc were not truly eyes, but merely described as eyes. Remember that the bible would have been written long after such events happened, and "it had marks like eyes" can easily turn into "it had eyes" in a short amount of time. I must first state that i do not believe aliens have visited us. I do believe other intelligent life exists (though how intelligent i cannot say. I consider anything able to make decisions intelligent. A dog, cat or mouse, not just humans) but that does not mean it can have travelled here to earth. My suggestion of aliens brining life here was merely a theory designed to provoke thought. It is *possible* but not something i believe yet. I do however think that life came from outside our earth... but it was not delivered by an alien courier. The problem with paradoxes is they are like circles... you can enter or exit them at any point, so in the god vs big bang paradox of what came first i can either say that god must have come first because something needed to create the universe, however, i can also counter that the universe appeared thanks to vacuum energy and slowly overtime expanded and created god from energy which we have yet to discover. Remember that thoughts are purely electrical and chemical so in theory a strange mass out in the universe could have the ability to think. This does not make it a conscious being though. I know im jumping back and forth here but its early and a large bank of cloud is approaching my office window and with zero-ish temperatures and a forecast of 4 inches of snow im rather excited and tired... Now, the quote above is true... The LHC is currently looking for the higgs boson, among other things. If i am not wrong, this is the particle that gives all others mass. Sort of like gluing a metal ball bearing to a tennis ball which makes it attracted to magnets. Without the higgs particle the "tennis ball" has no mass. It is not affected by ANYTHING. It almost doesnt exist. Such particles stream from the sun constantly, they pass through you, through your clothes and straight through the earth and just blast out the other side like nothing was even there. So this a little bit like energy (and incidentally spirits or ghosts.. If they have no mass they cannot be detected. We only know these particles exist because about 0.0000001% react with heavy water deep underground in monitoring stations.

This is the complete wrong forum, please check next time. To solve your problem... its not easy, it is possible but i dont know how. I do however know how to save your data: Get an ubuntu live CD. Ubuntu is linux and you can run it direct from the CD. http://www.ubuntu.com/ go there and download the ISO file. Use 7zip (download it) or something similar to copy the contents of the ISO file to a CD (you could also use roxio or similar) Once burned put the CD in the problem laptop, restart and boot from CD. Choose "Try ubuntu without making changes" and select your language. It will take a while to boot but once it does go to "Places" at the top of the screen then choose "80gb media" (or similar) you are looking for your C drive so look in all the drives for "WINDOWS" then you know youve hit the C drive. Find "documents and settings" then your username and copy the my docs folder. You can also find all the other data you need to keep. From that point if you have the windows install discs you can try a "repair" using the disc. It may delete your files however. It is likely that you will loose your files if you change the password anyway as windows uses your password to encode the files and link them to you so if the password changes you no longer "own" those files. But you will be able to access them using ubuntu. It ignores windows security The lesson? Use cmd very carefully

There is currently an evolution Vs creationism debate going on here at T17, but please post something constructive.... Evolution takes hundreds of thousands of years for most species to show a noticeable change. Humans ARE evolving right now. It's just too slow to notice. Go back in time 10,000 years and you will see we have come a long way from hairy, big faced dwarves. (well most of us.... )

Any post that is deleted will lead to the credits for that post being lost. Bear in mind that when your cents reach 100 they are flagged as being "ready" and 100 (or multiples of 100) will be sent to your Xisto billing account. So if you have 140 cents then after the mycent update you will have $1 in your billing.xisto.com account and 40 "mycents" here at T17. Look through your posts and see if any have been deleted, i imagine a mod would PM you to make you aware of the fact but just check through your post history on your profile. Anything that gives an error page has probably been deleted for one or more reasons (usually lack of content, one liners etc... often dont contribute much unless they are asking for advice etc...) If you are still in doubt PM a mod and ask if any of your posts have been edited or deleted. all copied content that is found not to be inside quote tags (and trust me, its easy to spot copied content!) will be edited by the mods and put inside the QUOTE tags, anything inside these tags does *not* count towards mycents so if you or a mod edits a post in this way then you will also loose cents. The key is that we are getting "money" for nothing really. But the forum's growth and size earns xisto money (through some method, there may be ads, i dont know. My adblocker blocks them all silently ) so we as members need to generate this growth and popularity through brilliant content and posts.

Cents will decrease when they get "sent" to your xisto account. Read the Xisto readme (im guessing you didnt because of your signature image) it really is important. It will tell you how the mycents are calculated (well, it wont give you the exact details, that would be foolish, but it tells you roughly) and about the forum rules.The system is more complex than it seems and these forums are really strict compared to the trash out on the web (hence why i remain here and shun other forums) but it pays off. If you stick to the rules, post decent stuff etc.. you will be rich in no time! (ok, the cash you earn is "locked in" but meh, it pays for my hosting so who cares)

Define "freeware", do you mean price or the license type? I dont think comodo or Avast are open source but they are both 100% free (price) for home use. You cant use them at work etc...

Ah yes... Avast also has an on access scanner which scans a file as you open it (and again, ive never noticed any delay, in fact i forgot it even existed) and a resident scanner that i think scans files even when you arent using them in the background. Again ive never even noticed this doing anything it's silent! I run Ubuntu 9.10 on my laptop and that has no protection, a little risky but meh, if things get bad ill just re-install... But im fairly safe for now, until someone starts churning out *nix virri. Got avast and comodo on my mums laptop (vista) my windows partition on my laptop (xp pro) my bro did have it before his MBR died... again, XP and i have the same two defences on my Win7 64bit gaming machine :PI also have put it on my grandads computer.

Just to clear up Avast is free, the legitimate license that filmdesire mentioned is a *free* license that is given to you when you register by email. And like i said they dont mistreat your email and i have never had any emails related to avast except the email with the key.I havent had any issues with it updating, most of the time i dont realize it is doing so until i get the "AV updated" message, unlike Sophos which we use here at work and it can easily lock your machine up for a few minutes. It's so resource heavy Personally i dont like AVG, it just seems too "windows 95" in appearance. I like the fact that avast is so easy to use for a beginner. You have a few options.. On the right click menu you can scan individual files or folders, so if you download a ZIP file from the net you can scan it individually and safely before opening it. It then has the two scan options, which are basically scan, and a boot-time scan. Often malware will embed itself so deeply within the operating system that if you delete it it will simply re-make itself because it is either loaded in RAM (which avast scans by default at the beginning of all scans) or it has made multiple copies of itself that start when windows starts, so you cant catch it off guard. An avast boot time scan starts windows in a special mode which is like safe mode only even more restrictive. It loads the absolute bare minimum to enable Avast to run. It really is simplistic so the malware is still dormant on the hard drive when avast comes along and erases it. Slick...As with all AV though it is best to keep backups of all files that avast is going to "clean" as no AV is perfect and it only takes the tiniest of changes and windows will be corrupt.But it is superb. Team it up with comodo which is the firewall/AV combo i mentioned and you are protected very well. Like someone else said avast will automatically cancel connections to dangerous websites and block downloads from these sites, so if the site tries to auto download something to your PC it gets blocked. (it doesnt "filter" the web, but it has a database of malware ridden sites which it will tell you about and block connections to ports that arent needed for web traffic.) Add that to comodo's superb defences which also alert you of strange activity (eg a program connecting to the net that Comodo has never met before) and its pretty tight.I havent faced up against spyware yet with Avast but Comodo will ask me if some new program tries to connect to the net or access another program in memory etc... so i should be well alerted to spyware activity and the firewall will block it from sending out data.

I'm at work at the moment but i will check it later perhaps. Thanks Evolution is definitely still happening via natural selection in humans and all other animals and plants. We are also encouraging evolution via genetically modifying crops. Though this is artificial evolution it shows how evolution works. No sensible person can really dispute evolution, or at least natural selection. That isnt to say god didnt kick it all off though. I dont think any sentient being started evolution (well unless we go with "life was bought to earth by aliens or on a rock from another planet" which actually is fairly likely given that a Mars meteorite was found on earth with a fossilized bacterium inside.) in which case you could argue that "god" is in fact an alien race as the ancients often depicted alien looking creatures descending from the skies. In fact the bible itself mentions metallic wheels descending from the skies with 4 living occupants similar to man: King James Red Letter edition 1944, Ezekiel 1:128 according to this wiki article: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ In answer to the question of why an alien life form might spread life and why they would spread simple life and let it evolve: They perhaps wanted to do a vast experiment, similar to what humans may one day wish to do to see how life does evolve on an isolated planet. and why not just plonk intelligent life here? Well perhaps they deposited microbes and nematodes and bacteria which could develop immunity to each other and adapt to the contents of various elements (for example human life has evolved to live in an atmosphere with specific oxygen so if we were to drop off 1000 humans they would just die on another planet due to changes in oxygen etc... But if we were to plonk some resistant bacteria there and wait 2 billion years we could go back and see intelligent life. And we cant say that 2 billion years is a long time. It is to us, but to an alien race which travels the stars and lives 1000 years it may not be so long. And then we factor in the fact that the scientists could be frozen in a sort of coma like state so they can be awakened when their experiment is complete and check the results. Who knows.... IMHO this is more plausible than an omni-potent god starting evolution. Of course you then have the issue of who created those aliens and so on...

Dude calm down! You've just posted about 20 posts!!! all the good stuff is now miles down the list!! Short posts wont get you credits, only longer, interesting posts.Back on topic Avast antivirus is the best (imho) antivirus for free that there is. free for life with a home license which you get by registering with your email address. I have *never* had any emails from them or anyone else linked to them except to give me my key. They are pretty trustworthy.Also try Comodo internet security. It started off as a firewall but now it also has free AV which is also good. Again free for home use for life. Now calm down on the posting!

There are almost certainly extra dimensions to the universe. Some, like you suggested operate on the quantum scale. (i would suggest the motion and action of electrons within an atom as an example of this) The question is whether any intelligent being can exist there. And if such a being exists what is it made of? Any god must still adhere to the laws of the universe and those of physics. Hence it must be made of something. Light a candle and feel the heat coming off of it. Does that heat take up a space? Look at the sun and see the light, does that light take up space? Get two magnets and feel the force (luke (star wars)) does that take up any space? some would argue yes as every force in the universe is in fact transmitted by subatomic particles but they have zero mass, unless of course they interact with the higgs field if such a field exists... But i digress... Weight is a subjective measurement of something relative to the gravity of the earth. Hence 1kg is how much one bag of sugar weighs on earth. However elsewhere it is different. On Jupiter it would way hundreds if not thousands of kilos. However *mass* is an objective measurement of the properties of the atoms themselves. So you could calculate the atomic mass of a bag of sugar based on the atoms that make sugar and then the number of protons, neutrons and electrons that make that atom. So if we say something has no mass then it is not matter, it can still be energy however. You cant "weigh" light You could in theory weigh the protons but thats getting into subatomic scales and the quantum world. It is enough to understand that energy does not weigh anything and it isnt matter. It's not always an easy concept but that's pretty much how it is. According to your theory however god must have a weight? or a mass? Which suggests he is made of matter... ? I cant disprove this. No-one can without a time machine. However my logic tells me this is not the case. For god must be made of something... energy, matter... whatever... which must have been created somewhere. So even though *god* was not created the stuff he is made of has to be created somehow... Interestingly there is so called zero-point energy which is actually energy created within a vacuum from nowhere. So in theory over quadrillions, or gogols of years (which is 10 followed by 100 zeros, i think) this energy could build up to such a level that is spontaneously turns into matter, hence a big bang, or if you prefer, the stuff that god is made of is created. Also i do not believe that god can exist in this plane or universe. He must exist in another universe (see many worlds theory) so why didnt he just create an ethereal world in his universe, and be with his creations, rather than create us in another dimension or universe? EDIT: Heres an interesting point from Jonnytracker's post that says: We are still evolving... Look back several hundred years and you will see that people were much smaller than we are now. This is due to the impact of readily available food sources which allow us to grow taller. This is sort of evolution, a species adapting to its surroundings. We now have much much more food and better quality so we can get bigger, this is an advantage because it lets us be stronger and also a bigger animal is less likely to be eaten by a predator. Which is why elephants and whales are so big. Not much can bring down a fully grown healthy elephant, but if the same animal was half the size it would be a meal for a pack of lions. Also evolution takes hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years to show even slight changes. If you had a photo of people 200,000 years ago you would see evolution in action. If you went 200,000 years into the future you would see human evolution.

I simply meant that any group will always be held accountable for the actions of its members. Based on that there should be efforts made to apologise for the wrongs which were forced upon the people. It may not be the pope's fault however he represents the organisation that caused the pain and bloodshed so he should apologise on behalf of those who are dead and cannot.

I am unsure of the lions killing children frequently because for one if there were lions outside my child would be inside or by my side and i would have a large sharp stick, and a bow. Lions can easily recognise the outline of a bow or a spear and it doesnt take a super intelligent lion to realise that when a sharp pointy stick flies through the air and lands in front of it that this thing is dangerous, hence the thing carrying the sharp thing is dangerous. Territorial killing is more likely. In which case the lions are there for good. Brave dogs would help by barking and letting the lions know they have been seen and that something else occupies the territory. Plus alerting the villagers. I also imagine a fair amount of chickens and goats are kept for food around the village which is a brilliant reason for a pack of lions to come take a look.Like anwii said different genders in a pack of lions have different purposes. A giant male with a huge mane is there to mate and protect the territory from other males. If he comes in a lot then its a territorial thing i would guess. If it is usually just females (with no mane) and the male hangs back or isnt there at all then its for food. The male lion will not hunt for food. The females are faster than he is so they will kill an animal and he will come in and eat. Unless of course he is a lone lion looking for a group of females in which case he will have no option but to hunt for himself or find dead things to eat.

I could be wrong in what i know here, the quantum world is fascinating but my only insight into it comes from websites such as wikipedia and newscientist. But with relevance to mass/energy i will say this: Mass and energy are the same thing in different forms. The atom bomb turns mass, solid particles, into pure energy. Hence a massive boom from an orb of uranium around the size of a tennis ball or possibly smaller. Think ice to water almost. It's the same stuff but in a different form. Im sure rvalkass knows far more than many of us on this subject but if you can grasp the fact that matter = energy and energy = matter then you can see how a pocket of energy (which of course has no size, no mass, nothing physical to measure except the forces within) could develop into particles and spread out. Now.... The reason i stated my beliefs here is to a) give myself credibility (believe it or not!) and b ) to show which side of the fence i sit on. I cant work you out TF, i find it very hard to argue against you without knowing the nature of your arguments. It sounds like you are a christian who supports the general ideas of a single male omni-potent god who created the universe. I cant reason however that you, a man of clear intelligence, could believe in the story of creationism? Unless you believe it in the metaphorical sense of god creating the universe (or god causing the big bang as many christian-scientists suggest) and the 7 days story is simply that, a story told to make the concept easier to understand and simplify it for inclusion in the bible or a simpler way to teach the story of creation to children without including unimaginable timescales. This is why i repeatedly question your beliefs. The first part of this argument supports me nicely the second part not so, but you are correct in what you say. It doesnt make the christian god evil, far from it. It doesnt make all christians evil. However the group will be held accountable for the actions of just a few and christianity has much to be sorry for. It is nothing but a ball and chain on the freedom of men and women all over the world. Its intentions may have been good at the root, to control those who would otherwise make life difficult for the majority. The thieves, rapists, adulterers etc....however, there is a limit. Killing a bad person does not make you a good person by default. It may not make you a bad person either, however killing everyone who things that the death penalty is a bad idea DOES make you a bad person. This is what Christianity begun before it was defeated by common sense and a weakness in its dilution thanks to the Roman's over ambitious invasion plans. Free thinkers, women who spoke out, women who wouldnt obey their husband would be beaten, tortured or killed. If you werent a man you would suffer, even as a child. My proof? *shrugs* you seem adept enough and finding this yourself however, the mere fact that their god is a man (when of course a metaphysical god not of this physical world would not need a gender. But perhaps he takes one on to make himself more approachable). I am a believer in the many world theory of multiple universes. Simply stated imagine each universe as a bubble, each is joined by wormholes or black holes in one universe which are whiteholes in another (sucking in on one side and blowing out on the other) This is a fundamentally wrong vision of the theory as the universes stack up on each other almost like multiple sheets of paper on top of each other (although of course, this too is wrong because it implies each universe is contained within a space, your house or office in the paper example, when of course each universe IS the space, there is nothing outside the multiverses, they do not exist within a space like bubbles or paper do. They simply exist. It is not possible to put this into a picture in your head but we got close) I cant tell you what started the first universe off, however according to this theory the big bang would actually be a black hole forming in another multiverse which causes a whitehole on the other side which produces a new multiverse and spews material into it. After all, although we think there is a HUGE amount of energy and matter in the universe we cannot know the scale of it as we have nothing to compare it to. measurement is comparison. So in theory our billions of galaxies could be only 1% of the matter contained within all the multivereses in the omniverse (a term i will use to describe the combined space, matter and energy of all multiverses) but without seeing the rest of the stuff in the omniverse we cannot be sure. Now, according to this theory god himself could indeed by lurking within another universe. Also according to this theory an afterlife can exist. The vibration of matter and i imagine energy is limited to a range of movement. We have yet to reach absolute zero, perhaps because we cant make anything cold enough, or perhaps because matter simply cant get to a complete stop. It may not be possible at all, no matter how cold. So according to this and many psychics (who im sure TF can discredit ) when we die our soul or spirit is at a higher vibration range than our physical bodies and so we enter a new plane of existence. The afterlife. This could in theory simply be another universe where matter and energy vibrate much faster. If you remember the fact that the multiverse stack upon each other so right now i am in my office, but i am also in the same space in another universe. My office probably isnt there, and i am not, but i am in the same space. So in theory if i were to die now i would not "move" but the universe around me would phase into another one as i transitioned between this and the next. This has all sort of got abit off topic but my basic point is this: Wait i forgot what it was...Ah yes: I am not saying god does not exist. But i am pleading to your intelligent side(s) that no god, irrespective of origin could create the universe in 7 days. Unless of course you are going to say that the universe already existed and he simply cooled the earth. Now of course the christian god is omnipotent. He can do anything, however logic dictates that 7 days is wrong thanks to carbon dating and various other methods of time scale measurement, unless of course he fooled with the carbon isotope content to make us think it took billions of years when in fact it didnt. In a book full of hypocrisy and lies i cannot believe this story. That is my basic argument. Anything i say can be defeated with "But god is all powerful. He could end the universe with a fart if he wanted to so he could of actually done that. Next?" or "There is no proof so it cannot be so". But the basic argument lies in timescale.