mitchellmckain

In conclusion, I think we can say that writing outside the bounds of an array in C can cause just about anything to happen. Since this can be devilishly hard to track back to its cause, then, if at all possible, it is best to prevent this from ever happening using something like grib's idea of non-copyable classes.

Found it. Later on I was assigning something to lvmsg[lsg] while lsg was still -1.

Well I did narrow it down, at least aparently. The access violation occurs in free(isg) void exit_program( int err ){#define tfree(a) {try{free(a);}catch(...){continue;}} tfree(texture_id); if(mxmp)tfree(moonp); if(mxpp)tfree(planp); tfree(sgi); tfree(lvmsg); tfree(isg);//followed by a lot more of these But the offending code is probably in the following snippet. lsg is initialized to -1, and sgi is an indexer, bubble sorted by partition. The indices of the partitions are in isg (shifted by isg[0] to save memory in the allocation of sgi). lvmsg and isg are allocated as nsg+1 intergers. if(stargroups)for(i=0;i<nsg;i++)lvmsg[i]=isg[i+1]-1; if(stargroups&&ii<mxo){ if(ii>=isg[lsg+1])lsg++; //if in stargroup get object in luminosity order if(lsg>=0)i=sgi[ii-isg[0]]; else i=ii; //if in stargoup then not visible if last was not visible if(lsg>-1)if(ii>lvmsg[lsg]){vis[i]=false;fard[i]=false;continue;}} else {i=ii;if(ii==mxo)lf=lumf;} Setting stargroups to false eliminates the access violation but i=ii; after this section which eliminates all significant effectiveness of the code in the program does not eliminate the access error. The behavior of the access violation has been fairly predictable in this manner remaining unchanged after many changes in the code. So I have a good chance at least that the bug is right there in front of me and easy to fix. In fact while I was writing this post I narrowed it down to if(stargroups)for(i=0;i<nsg;i++)lvmsg[i]=isg[i+1]-1;This makes a kind of sense since it is almost the only place in this portion of code where an assignment to these allocated blocks are made. lvmsg is allocated just after isg is allocated and freed just before isg is. You are quite right of course and I may be chasing after a ghost. My code will always be part C rather than fully C++ but using more classes would help. This will be a longer term goal for me I think. I have been doing a lot of house cleaning recently and this may be a good time to try the stuff at boost. However speed is a critical issue in this program. In fact the code above was itself an important speed improvement.

A code snippet is not going to help here since there is just a bunch of free statements called when the program is getting ready to shut down, but I must assume the problem occurs somewhere in the 16,000 lines of code where the memory blocks are used. If I could isolate the problem to snippet I could figure out the problem myself. I have put the free statements in try catch statements to manage the problem but sometimes even this fails (pretty strange huh?).I plan to test my hypothesis that out of bounds references are causing the problem by suppressing the usage of the offending memory block and seeing that also eliminates the access violation. Also thanks to gribs suggestion I will check for array overruns in the preceeding memory allocation. I can even test the idea with either usage suppression or by rearranging the memory allocations.Thanks for the suggestions.

I am getting access violations when I free up (using free) memory blocks (integer arrays) that have been allocated using malloc. This has only recently started happening in the project I have been working on for years so it is not because I do not know how to use free or malloc. I am wondering if this can occur due to a previous write to the block using an array index which is out of bounds, even though the write itself does not generate an error.

Let me first say that I am both a Christian and a scientist (masters in physics), so I am somewhat sympathetic to both sides. In principle, I am in favor of having a religion class in public schools. However I can accept the reality that this is impossible. If the pressure in the community is enough to cause the serious consideration of substituting evolution science with creationist pseudo-science (rhetoric superficially clothed in the terminology of science), which is what is happening in areas of the United States, imagine what the effect of this pressure would be on a religion class. Such a religion class will become nothing more than brainwashing tool in the hands of the dominant religion in the area. Now while I sympathize with the complaints of these religious groups that the public schools are already a brainwashing tool in the hands of the secular government, I must say that, as long as religious groups express hostility to every religious group and idea in disagreement with their own doctrines, then this is a reality they must live with. After all there are private schools. For many parents like me, we would prefer not to isolate our children, as if we were keeping them in a brainwashing camp, and see to their religious education ourselves without the interference of fanatics. Science tries to formulate a test by which you can decide whether a theory is correct or incorrect. Simply hunting for evidence to support your theory is what lawyers and salesmen do, not scientists, and it is called rhetoric. The difference is a particular type of honesty which is rather peculiar to science. However this methodology of science is more suitable to some topics than others. It has proven most suitably applied to a thesis which can be given a mathematical formulation relating measurable quantities. Otherwise it is difficult to formulate an objective test by which the truth of the thesis can be determined. The "creationist" or "intellegent design" thesis does not fit this criterion very well at all. Therefore whether it is true or not, it is most definitely not a good scientific theory. Evolution as a process can be documented, making it a good (not great) scientific theory. However as a historical claim about the origin of the species, evolution like any other historical claim is a far more difficult thesis to test. As both a Christian and a scientist I cherish hopes for bridging the gap between the two points of view. My line of attack has been against the ideas of mechanistic determinism and accidental variation in evolution and against the idea of design in creationism. I think both of these extremes display a blindness to the realities of what it means to be a living organism. I am saying that the what divides the two viewpoints is the same failure to understand the nature of living things. Living things are not "designed", they grow. They are not determined, they make creative choices. Variation is not accidental, it is intentional. Evolution reflects the creative learning process of living things. Creation reflects the fact that living things are sensitive to their environment and can be cultivated. The only "creationism" that I support and believe in is simply that God played an active role in the orgin of the universe and everything in it, and not as a scientific theory or even primarily as an explanation for things. God is the ultimate black box in which to hide a multitude of mysteries and unanswered questions. Our belief in this is a matter of faith not science. I am very much opposed to the idea of design in creation. It is the difference between how a watchmaker makes a watch and how a gardener makes a flower. The watchmaker makes a dead thing by a process of design and execution. A gardener makes his flower by interactive relationship with a living thing which we call cultivation. He cares for it, provides for its needs, and encourages it to produce what he wants. There is no design. The same goes for all creators of livings including teachers and parents. When creating a living thing the created is a participant in the process of creation. If isn't a participant in its own creation then it isn't alive. The essence of the learning process is trial and error. Try many things and find the variations which produce good results. It is a two part process: creativity and evaluation. Evolution in essence is the same process with slightly different terms: variation and selection. The question is whether you think of it as something dead (automatic, accidental, unintentional), something which happens to living things, or as an activity in which living things participate by choice, purposely and intentionally. Also, living things are not isolated components. They interact in living collectives which are also alive. The organelles are alive. The cells are alive. The multicelluar organisms are alive. The communities are alive. The species are alive. The ecosystems are alive. Evolution simply describes the process whereby the species is creative in genetic variation, making choices in response to evironmental change and learning new and different ways to live. But the problem is that the two sides of the opposition approach the topic as if they were engaging in holy war against the forces of evil and ignorance. Of course, "evil" is the Christian word. The other side uses the word "ignorance". They do not want to understand the opposing point of view. They only want to prove that the other side's point of view is completely invalid, stupid, and utterly without merit. I think that both science and Christianity will be the casualties in this and all that will be left is rhetoric. The activities themselves are not directly in jeapardy. It is the is in minds of people where they are casualties. It is the true meaning and understanding of science and Christianity which are lost when they are replaced by rhetoric. And yet the activities themselves are not immune. For when people do not understand or respect an activity, then why would they participate with time and money.

On the contrary, it can happen a lot faster than you think. You see the usual course of evolution, what I call individual evolution, depends on genetic drift. Genetic drift comes to a stand still when the population becomes large and natural selection is done away with. However in this next stage will be a whole different process, and the initial impetus will be a tremendous increase in variation due to the lack of natural selection. It might not be that long in the future when what we call the handicapped become the majority. No the "lighter note" is not that it will be a long time coming, it is that our technology can more than compensate for our physical handicaps. This is the historical pattern. As individual cells learned to work together in communities, the communal "technology" quickly became more important than the survival capabilities of the individual cells. The great increase in the variety of cells that could survive in the community became the driving force of evolution for the whole community of cells.

Not a chance. Suvival and war is about adaptability, and human beings are the most adaptable machines on this planet. By the very fact that they are designed by human beings, man made machines, will never beat out mankind. Mankind's worse enemy will always be itself and if the man made machines outlast us it will be because we have destroyed ourselves.

I don't think any perceived mistreatment is intended. I think the perception comes from the fact that joining any community involves a learning process. Learning how to communicate with these particular people and those people also learning how to communicate with you without either trampling on the other's sensitivities, or more often learning endure and ignore such tramplings.This experience is not something that only the lesser informed joinees go through, sometimes it is even worse when you are rather knowlegeable. Much knowlege often accompanies strong opinions and this will most likely get you torpedoed until you and the other knowlegeable members of the community teach each other to respect one another for the differing sets of knowlege and expertise that you and they have.

My whole family are fans of all of Miyazaki's films: Naoshka (Nausica), Laputa(Castle in the sky), Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, and Howl's Moving Castle. We own all the DVDs except for Howl's Moving Castle which we saw in the theater. We watch them repeatedly and never tire of them. I originally saw most of these in Japanese without even subtitles so I could only guess what they were saying, but I still loved them.Metropolis was not bad but Steam Boy was lacking and neither have the genius of Miyazaki's work. Ghost in the Shell 1&2 was pretty good. We would watch a lot of the other anime if it was available at Blockbuster, but we are not going to buy them.I despise American animation with its busy noisy joke every second and I think it is artless tacky and even trashy. The last good Walt Disney animation I can think of was Beauty and the Beast.I am also a complete nuts for the the Japanese television animation, "Hikaru no Go." I am currently in the middle of watching its 75 episodes for the 7th time.

If you are truly interested in discussion, you should post this under the previous post on the same topic.

If you ask the whether dreams have meaning, I must reply with the question of whether waking life has meaning. Some philosophers actually argue that there is no such thing as meaning. I think that meaning is always something we choose to see in things, and our lives are richer for whatever meaning we see in it (whatever the part of life it is, in which we see meaning). This is at the root of the difference between religious and non-religious points of view as well. REM sleep is not the same as dreaming, for there seem to be purely physiological functions fulfilled during REM sleep. Scientifically we have no means to study the function of dreams and the function of REM sleep separately. It is reasonable to assume that dreams play a role in the functions of REM sleep, but there is no way to be sure.

I just noticed that this code line has an error. Since I used data1 and data2 for the pareameters this should be, return DefWindowProc(hWnd,uMsg,data1,data2);

The studies in the notes above were using E-coli and were in response to ultra-violet light. If we have a similar gene it would probably only apply to skin cancer but I doubt that it really applies directly to cancer in humans at all. I think that our cells are far more sophisticated than E-coli. I believe it is somewhat well known that the human body deals with cancer all the time as a part of its immune response, and that cancer only threatens us when this fails. This is more likely to happen when we are exposed to more cancer causing agents like radiation and carcinogens. What we learn from the notes on mutagenesis in this regard is that even the immune system is only backup for a very efficient DNA repair system. Considering this, it seems that the best prevention is to reduce exposure to these cancer agents and to support a healthy immune system with proper nutrition. If we have genes which bypass the genetic repair like E-coli, I would expect it to be much more limited and controlled than it is in E-coli. The point seems to be to maintain the evolutionary advantage of genetic variation and it seems that would only advantageous in reproductive cells. However, since we have our own means of producing genetic variation we might not have these bypass genes at all. The main thing which I learned from this study of mutagenesis was that variation which is the driving force of evolution is not random or accidental but controlled and intentional. It would only have been random at some very early point in evolutionary history.

Based on doubts I had about the random nature of genetic variation and the origins of mutation, I did some library research and found some very intresting data and conclusions in books about Mutagenesis. My conclusions are preceeded by a ">" character.Friedberg, Walker and Siede, “DNA Repair and Mutagenesis” 1995“Once it was recognized that DNA is the informationally active chemical component of essentially all genetic material (with the notable exception of RNA viruses), it was assumed that this macromolecule must be extraordinarily stable in order to maintain the high degree of fidelity required of a master blueprint. It has been something of a surprise to learn that the primary structure of DNA is in fact quite dynamic and subject to constant change. For example, gene transposition is a well established phenomenon in prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. In addition to these larger scale changes, DNA is subject to alteration in the chemistry or sequence of individual nucleotides.” This book out lines the process by which DNA participates in a constant cycle of damage and repair. The book describes 3 types of cellular responses to DNA damage (including errors): Reversal, excision and tolerance. The first is a reaction to fairly minor damage which can be repaired by the action of a single polypeptide enzyme. Excision is a much more elaborate process by which the damaged or mismatched pieces are cut away and the original sequence is restored. Tolerance mechanisms do no remove the primary damage and thus often results in a permanent change in the genome. There are at least 4 known mechanisms for reversing different types of DNA damage, the simplest of which is called photoreactivation of DNA by which a light activated enzyme removes the type of damage that is most commonly caused by UV radiation. Heterogeneity of excision repair chapter 7 Because some of the repair mechanisms are tied to the transcription process, there is a bias towards the repair of transciptionally active DNA sequences. But the existence of repair mechanisms for nonactive DNA has been shown to be of critical importance to the prevention of cancer. >This pheonmena of “heterogeneity of exicision repair” is another example that suggests that the whole process is anything but random. Mismatch repair chapter 9 Tolerance chapters 10-12 “For example, prokaryotic cells have evolved mechanisms for repairing single-strand gaps and double-strand breaks in their DNA that have arisen either directly from DNA damage or indirectly as the result of processing of the initial DNA damage. These mechanisms involve proteins that also play roles in the homologous recombination of undamaged DNA. Niether of these processes appear to be particulary mutagentic. In addition, prokaryotic cells have evolved another class of mechanisms for processing damaged DNA which, although not yet fully understood a biochemical level, appears to involve the polymerization of DNA past a lesion and is often referred to a translesion DNA synthesis. In contrast to other systems that act on damaged DNA, this type of processing can be highly mutagenic and, in fact is required for most UV radiation and chemical mutagenesis.” pg 407 “In the case of E coli, in which these alternative mechanisms for dealing with damaged DNA have been studied most closely it has become clear that their regulation and operation is intimately related to the complex SOS regulatory network. The expression of the more than 20 genes in this network is induced by DNA damage and is regulated by the LexA and RecA protiens.” pg 407 The book described the experiements, “that first suggested that an inducible system is required for mutagenesis,” where UV radiation failed to induce mutation in bacteriophages unless the host cell was also irradiated thereby activating the SOS system of the cell that allowed the translesion DNA sythesis process to occur in the DNA of both the host cell and the invading viral DNA. pg 466 “Studies of UV radiation-induce mutagenesis of the bacterial chromosome played a key role in the development of the notion that recA+ -lexA+-dependent functions are required for the specialized processing of damaged DNA that gives rise to mutations and that this process is inducible. Evelyn Witkin’s observation that lexA(Ind-) mutants were not mutable by UV radiation led her to postulate that the lexA+ gene might encode or control a new or modified DNA polymerase capable of inserting nucleotides oposite UV radiation lesions and that UV mutagenesis occurred by a mechanism of translesion replication.” pg 467 > So we have a set of genes for the express purpose of of bypassing the DNA repair system to allow mutations to occur! > No genetic alteration is external or random, because alteration is not due to random damage or replication error as much as it is due to a particular type of response to DNA damage. Edward A. Birge, “Bacterial and Bacteriaophage Genetics”“Transposons are units of DNA that move themselves from one DNA strand to another or to a new position on the same molecule, inserting at nearly random positions. They are also capable of catalyzing DNA rearrangements such as deletions or inversions.” pg 80. “One of the basic tenets of genetics is that indiscriminate exchange of genetic information is disadvantageous to a species. In eukaryotic cells, problems with chromosome pairing during mitosis and meiosis often prevent cells that have acquired foreign chromosomes from surviving. However, because segregation of the nucleoid in prokaryotic cells requires no such elaborate mechanism, other strategies must come into play. In particular, many bacterial cells and their viruses use a system of restriction and modification to tag their own DNA and disrupt any foreign DNA that may be present.”

I voted strongly in support capital pushiment. But lets get away from the euphemism and call it what it is. I believe that the government should be able to kill people for what it considers adequate reasons. It is a final solution to people, who have proven that it is not worth the effort or the risk of rehabilitation. For I think the purpose of prison should be rehabilitation, therefore, I do not in general believe that life imprisonment makes much sense. There could be exceptions I suppose in cases where the expense of life imprisonment could be justified. However I do not believe in the death penalty for the sake of justice. I do not believe in "an eye for an eye" or a life for a life. I think that the proper justification for the death penalty is public menace. By public menace I mean behavior that consists of preying upon strangers or endangering the public. Even when the objective may be only be rape or robbery, this kind of behavior is a general threat to the well being of the public.I must say that I have one strong reservation about giving the governement the power to kill people for what it considers adequate reasons. This can only be given to the government if we have reason to trust it. In other words it relies on the adequate protections of rights that have been an American tradition. The "Patriot Act" has seriously eroded both the protection of those rights and the trust we can place in the goverment. So I am not sure that this time in particular is the right time to advocate capitol punishment in the United States.

I think you need to read what I wrote a lot more carefully. The whole point of this thread is that if the spirit exists it must interact with us and the physical world somehow or it is meaningless. So the question is how? Materialistic and atheistic thinkers often point to this missing link to torpedo the whole idea of spirit as foolish and unsupportable. I did say that the human mind is a completely physical orgranism, but the spirit is completely non-physical. All I do is give this idea of non-physical a definite meaning by saying that something which is non-physical is simply energy which is not a part of the energy which is part of the conserved energy of the physical universe and bound by its laws. It is being part of the universe and subject to its laws that makes things perishable, so there is no way in which saying that the spirit is made of energy makes it anything less that everthing than religious tradition attributes to the spirit, unless perhaps you ascribe to a philosophy like Plato's, which I despise.

Many people believe in some kind of existence after death. In this thread, let's question whether this makes any sense, and ask exactly what is meant.What is it that continues to exist after death? If death is survived by a spirit or whatever you want to call it, then what is it made out of? Where can it be found and how does it connect to everthing else we know about ourselves? How do we know?Now that I have asked the quetions, I will put forward my answers to these questions for you to consider as well. I will call the existence after death the spirit. And I propose that is made out of energy like everything else, but not a part of the measurable conserved energy, which the physical universe is made of. This energy which the spirit is made of, is given form by the choices we make. These choices are events with both physical and non-physical components.I will describe the physical component first:Living is a non-linear process that creates points of bifurcation where a quantum wave collapse is amplified to macroscopic consequences. The result is an event which has no pre-existing cause. Human consciousness identifies these events (which we call our actions and choices) as caused by the self, and our sense of self come from its identification as the cause of these events. Therefore the self and its actions are not in a traditional cause effect relationship, but are an example of self-causality, which means both the cause and the effect come into existence simultaeously. When we make a choice, we also simultaneously choose the reasons which are the cause of our choice. These self caused events transform the unverse as the usual type of cause and effect travel outward from these events at the speed of light. This is the true arrow of time, for the quantum wave collapse is not reversible. Particles are represented by waves (from which a probability distribution can be computed) which collapse instantly to point (according to that probability distribution), but the point (highly localized wave packet) cannot un-collapse. The localized wave packet cannot instantly revert to the non-localized wave, for the wave packet cannot expand faster than the speed of light. It must expand accoriding to Schrodinger's equation.The physical consists of energy which is bound in a single definite (macroscopically four dimensional) mathematical form which we call the universe. Everthing physical is an inseperable piece of this whole, bound by the laws which are its shape and form. The energy is bound to this form by the limits described by quantum mechanics. What do I mean? Well for example the energy is bound to a definite quantifiable amount. So we say that energy is conserved. However energy is bound to this quantity only within macroscopic limits defined by quantum mechanics. According to quantum mechanics, during shorter intervals of time (dt) an amount of energy dE need not be conserved according to (dE)(dt)=plank's constant. Here is the real boundary of the physical universe. It is not out there somewhere, but everywhere.The non-physical consists of energy which not bound to this single unified quantifiable form. The non-physical can interact with the physical only at the boundary, which means that it can only interact within the limits set down by quantum mechanics. The choices of living beings which we described above occur at this boundary and the formless nonphysical causes of our actions are given form by our choices. It is this form which we call the spirit. The spirit is not a piece of the physical universe and so it is not bound by the laws of its form. The spirit is only bound by the laws of it own form, which if you remember, I said was created by the choices of the living creature which indentifies it as the cause of its actions.How do I know all this? The same way I "know" anything else. It is consistent with my experience of reality. Is any knowledge certain? No. For example, I "know" the sun exists. But everything I have experienced in life could be a dream and when I wake up I may find out that there is no sun after all. The simple point of fact is that regardless of whether my experiences are "real" or not, the existence of the sun is consistent with those experiences. Knowledge is something we take for granted in order to live our lives. It is an hypothesis that we accept on faith, so that our minds can reason, because reason cannot find any beginning. Logic only goes from postulates to conclusions. Reason must start from somewhere and we must take our starting point on faith.

P.S. I am a fan of Aristotle, particularly his philosophical writings. It is too bad that his scientific accomplished are often overshadowed by what he got wrong in physics, not to mention the bad rap he has been given due the distortion of his ideas by medeival writers.

Sorry you took offense. None was intended. But until fairly recently a lot of what you were talking about was called natural philosophy. I admit I have a one sided point of view because the only science I took part in was physics and now I am a physics educator. You may have a really valid point when it comes to the non-physical sciences, who have attempted to adopt perhaps excessively mathematical methods in emulation of physics to deal with topics to which this approach may be less suitable. This focus of physics on the mathematical relationship between measurable quantities was a shift that began with Galileo and became increasingly solidified through to the 20th Century. I applaud and make much of this restriction of the topic of physics because I think it is the key to its sucess in the enormous contributions it has made to technology. My excessive identification of the word "science" with this definition of physics is a reaction to the efforts of many people (typically atheists) to piggyback their ideas on what they think science is in order to add the weight of this technological contibution to their side of the argument. This clear and restrictive definition of physics makes it clear where the authority of physics ends and helps to block the misuse of physics in rhetoric. Touche. But if we are talking about the meaning of words. The only certainty here is my certainty about meaning of the words I use.

I am going to change the order of statements your post to deal with the most important points first. Of course. One cannot live without faith. The point is that everything important is checked up on, usually sooner rather than later, because every advance lays a foundation for further developments. As soon as a discovery is announced proffessors and researchers are all over it looking for further research opportunities. They have to confirm the previous result in order to understand what it takes to make further progress. I don't have to check everthing personally all I have to do is read about further progress being made on the topic by different groups. If something is so uninteresting that only one group of scientists are working on it then of course this dynamic is not operational. They do not expect any such thing. People ask them to explain what they are doing in the ill suited language of english (or any other language that is not mathematics) and the do the best they can. People may take this on faith and bandy it about as if they understood it. But scientists do not expect this, they ignore it. Besides I deny and challenge your claim that not everyone can follow the proceedure. They can if they want, it just takes more work that they are willing do. We make choices about what is important and we want to do with our life. I don't think prevarication about this is honest. For example, I finally decided that research was not my bag and after attempting two PHD projects in theoretical physics lost interest and chose to do something else. Just because you don't do something doen't mean you can't. I have a female cousin who switched careers from coal miner to lawyer (with a law degree) to minister. The only person that you can truly judge is incapable of something is yourself and your judgement is the main reason why you cannot do it. I am not denying that people have different abilities but many of these abilities can change and it is what you do with what you have that counts anyway. Anyone can do math because it is a technique for extending you innate abilities with a pencil and paper. Whether you want to or not is a different matter. I don't play football worth a darn and I certainly do not have the build for it. But it doesn't mean I can't. I willingly admit I have no desire. Sorry but you have some real misconceptions here. Science is not and never was based on common sense. Physics at least is pretty simple. It is about discovering the mathematical relationships between measurable quantities. That is all it has ever been about. All these words are from attempts to describe what they are doing in english. Some people find these descriptions enjoyable and so there is a market for it. Everyone has to decide what is important for them. Doing what you assume you ought to do without deciding this for yourself is a sure recipe for meaningless life. I see no need to assume the obvious. It is only natural to assume that playing football will involve the use of ball. People may want to appropriate the term science for their activities in order to steal its authority like an underhanded politician but it inevitable that the ruse will eventually be revealed for the rhetoric it really is. What comment?

To keep it honest, I must admit that I am a homophobe. Phobias like this derive from bad experiences one has had in the past. Mostly, all this means is that I may avoid their company or feel a bit uncomfortable in their presence. In my previous posts, I hope that I have displayed some degree of cool logic. But I am utterly offended by the idea that some people are born as homosexuals, as if we do not have freedom to choose. Along with this are some other very noxious ideas to which I am also very opposed. This includes the idea that only men bursting with testosterone, athletics and "manliness" are not homosexual. I am a strong advocate of male liberation from these absurd ideas about how men should behave and live their lives. Trying to make homosexuality out to be some kind of genetic conditon is a terrible mistake, and will not help anyone.

As a follow up, another thought ocurred to me. Complete equivelence between homosexual right and religious freedom is not quite possible. The problem is that homosexuality is a sexual activity and therefore there are some restrictions with regard to children. These restrictions are already in place under the guidelines with regards to the sexual abuse of children. There are some gray areas about an appropriate environment for children which is not easy to resolve, except on a case by case basis. It is better not to tie the hands of adjudicators in such situation with legal mandates, injustices by particular adjudicators can be appealed. But the primary concern in such situations must be the well being of the child and so it is better to keep politics out of it.

I am a Christian, a physics instructor and a bit of a philosopher (and theologian) as well (I have a 3 year masters degree from a theological seminary). I love the Bible but I do not think it is intendened to be a precise description of how God created the universe (after all that is not exactly knowledge which we need to have, let alone understand). Frankly I don't buy the idea of a god who has powers like the witch in "Bewitched" or the genie in "I dream of genie" where you wiggle your nose or make a wish and things just appear. This is a childish idea of magic where something more powerful and knowlegeble does all the real work for you somehow. I am not saying that God could not make something appear, but that if he did it would be more a matter of him supplying the required energy and giving it the proper form according to his knowlege and know how. I also think that his creation of the world was not something anywhere near as trivial as that. Have you heard the conundrum, "can God make a log so heavy that even He cannot lift it?" Well I think that His creation of the world was more of something like this. I think God's aim was to create something separate and independent that he did not control nor was able to predict. Anything else would have been boring and pointless. What I am talking about is free will or as I like to put it, creating life. I think the image of God simply breating life into us does not come close to the difficulty involved in creating life. In fact, I think that this entire universe in all its complexity was all a part of that one simple goal, to create life.

Cassandra, if you are arguing against Hawking's claim that the universe doen't need a cause, then I agree with your conclusion but not your reasons. It is not the philosophy behind quantum physics that you want to look at but the philosophy that derives from it. What is behind quantum physics is the methodology of science not a philosophy. The point is really that quantum physics reveals the limitations of physics itself, just as Godel's proof revealed the limitations of logic and mathematics. This is why so many physicists like Einstein have had such a hard time accepting quantum physics. Physics just studies the mathematical relationship between measurable quanties. The question you have to ask is whether this can be complete description of reality. I can understand why you want to defend causality, because causality reaches beyond just physics. But the question you have to ask is whether the limited idea of causality that functions in physics is the only kind of causality. Because if you accept that it is then the materialistic determinists will have you over a barrel. Consider what is the cause of your actions? According to the materialistic determinist the ultimate cause of your actions are the initial conditions of the universe. You know when physicists concede that the universe is finite, one might be tempted to ask what is beyond those limits. But the physicist will tell you that there are no boundaries of the universe to which such a question could apply. Yet in quantum physics that boundary is right there staring us in the face. When quantum physics says causality only applies above a certain scale it is describing a boundary. It is saying that the deterministic mathematical relationships only go so far and no farther, and that is a boundary about which you can ask what is on the other side, for the limits of physics are not the limits of our mind. Perhaps there are causes which cannot be described by mathematical equations. What do you think? These limits described by quantum physics does not make science pointless because the physics does work within those limits and works very well indeed. It does enable us to predict a great many things. It just cannot predict absolutely everything. No you do not. That is the great thing about science. Nobody has to take anybody's word for anything. That is its great advantage over things like religion. Everything physics says has to be such that anybody can follow the procedure described to see it for oneself. You just have to be careful when a physicists starts telling you what means, because at that point he has stopped doing physics and is doing philosophy.