America is doomed

I gave your "point by point rebuttal" the credit it deserved. For example, since you so desparately need to smacked with the truth in order to see it:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/14/60II/main577975.shtml

For another example:

How is merely calling the accusation wrong, and saying the opposite, a rebuttal worth the paper it's written on?

 

Because that same money could actually be spent on researching ACTUALLY CLEAN sources of energy (which would also replace oil).

 

And those are being researched also. But why throw all the money into one thing. After all, even if hydrogen fuel cells work (and the reserach looks promising) the hydrogen still has to come from somewhere.

And given that the mnore exotic fuel sources might be years off, why not get some clean coal technologies that work now, and then eventually get replaced by more exotic technologies that will not be practicable for 50 years?

 

Absolutely, I agree. But, something had to have always existed in order for all of us to be here now. Which is more logical, that finite matter or gas has always existed, or that a, by definition, infinite God has always existed?

Of course the third choice is to attribute deistic characteristics to matter, gas, and ulimately "mother earth."

 

It's more a matter of having a sufficient grasp on reality combined with enough historical understanding to realize that "descendants of apes" is actually a metaphor and thus that it doesn't literally mean "grandma must've been a gibbon."

 

Haha. Who's definition? Mankinds? What the hell do we know? What proof do we have that God=infinite?
And 'topcatcoles' "E=mc^2 goes backwards" means that matter doesnt necessariy have to have existed always. It may have been energy. Which could of course be used by some as a synonym for God.

 

Re: Thunderdome

Maybe the Antichrist was aborted, thus sparing humanity Armageddon.

-- Dan Loney

Maybe a liberal that can actually win a national office was aborted, thus giving Republicans control 2 branches of government.

-- MtMike


... two men enter, one man leaves. This is thunderdome.

 

Why on earth are you asking a soccer board's politics forum this question? Can't you get Google to work on your internets?

Karl, just to continue to beat this topic to death - how good would our national team be if, until the age of 18, children in this country were taught that soccer was played with the hands?

 

Because the amount of money thrown into clean coal research is grossly disproportionate to that spent on clean energy research, and because so-called "exotic" technologies are NOT 50 years off scientifically - but WILL be 50 years off practically if we keep thinking of these as technologies for the future and not for the present. For instance,the latest solar cell prototypes being developed by STMicroelectronics, a Europen company, promise a per watt cost of $0.20 over a typical 20-year life span, compared to the $0.40 per watt cost of generating electricity by burning fossil fuels, which costs will inevitably go up as the fossil fuels become more scarce, harder to extract, or taxed greater to remedy environmental problems. (http://edition.cnn.com/2003/TECH/biztech/10/02/solar.cells.reut/). So why would you continue to throw money at an industry you know should be mothballed?

Pennsylvania spent a long time and a lot of money trying to prop up its dying industries (coal, steel, etc), before they finally realized that the future was where they should be spending their money, not the past. Now, their concerns are technological and service industries.

 

Hey, if it works for Silvestre . . .

 

The Wizards are a pretty dire example. I said "played with the hands," not "played like a bunch of retards trying to ******** a doorknob."

/"Dodgeball"

 

I'm not trying to approach that question from a faith-based perspective, but rather from a logical perspective.

Obviously, it is true that something or someone has to have always existed. We can't comprehend that, but that is true. Something has to have always been there.

One option is that these materials that we know are finite, that we can harness, and, to a certain extent, use and control has always been there. Finite matter which can be destroyed.

The other option is that a God would have always been there. A God, as described in the Bible (and gods from other religions and cultures have been described similarly) that is infinite, i.e. transcends time. An infinite God does not need to be created. Infinite, by definition, has no beginning or end.

Those are the two logical, yes, even scientific options. Not faith based. Those are the two options that mankind is presented with. Now, there are offshoots and variations upon them, but they all really come back to those.

 

Ho-ly ****. I'm suddenly having thoughts of the "If you have to live somewhere else, where would it be?" thread.

 

What a knee-jackass response.

edit: the phrase actually is "knee-jerk response," but I like how I said it more.

 

Again, asking these questions on a soccer board is counterproductive, unless Stephen Hawking happens to post here.

Words like "always" don't apply, because at the beginning of the universe, the concept of time did not exist. No, I don't understand it. No, I can't explain it better, except to refer you to people like Dr. Hawking, who might be able to. But the logical premise from which you start - that time is a constant - has been dead for almost a century now.

 

I fail to see this "logic."

Why does something always have to have existed? Science has shown that spontaneous actions can occur. Now whether these are truly "spontaneous" is not readily apparent, but science doesn't proclaim that a mutation is an act of God if it isn't understood.

This is where science reins over religion. Science is willing to say, "you know what, we really don't know for sure, but we're interested in finding out." Whereas religion just makes **** up.

Those statements flirt poorly with logic and are in no way scientific.

 

I wopuld love to see his explination of soccer in a black hole.

 

Kansas City Wizards playing a home game.

 

*cough* Premium Hamatchi *cough*

 

sure spontaneous. But a universe worth of material out of nothing?

 

But postulating a god just makes things even more complicated without answering any scientific questions. All that putting a god at the beginning does is stop research into the area (which would be a shame, as there is lots of interesting stuff being done in inflation theory and so forth), and instead leaves us with a totally unscientific entity that cannot be sensed, detected, discerned, described, predicted or exploited. It doesn't do anyone any good, except on the emotional level.

 

Actually, we don't know if matter CAN be destroyed completely. As has been stated, any action on a mass results in energy being produced. If a mass is "destoyed", an amount of energy proportional to that mass is produced. Since this works both ways, mass producing energy, AND energy producing mass, mass isn't "really" finite, is it? Mass->energy->mass-> etc.
All this btw, is theory.

 

Why do you make this sound like a bad thing? Besides, E=mc^2 is not a theory, but a conversion factor. We turn matter into energy and back again all the time in particle colliders.