NASA?s most advanced telescope complete after 20 years (PHOTO)

Spinoza said it first. It upset quite a few people at the time.

The message hasn't yet got through to everybody, and you still hear pious fables about parallel bible translations coming out identical (even when they must have come out identically wrong).

s dumb.

Krw hasn't really mastered the distinction between something he believes an d a demonstrable fact. Evidence-based argument is quite beyond him, because he can't see the difference between something he believes and something he can demonstrate to be true. It's an interesting failure of cognition.

You are so locked into your religious bullshit that you cannot even understand how other people think about it. But that does not mean that other people hate you. Hate is what is in the religious books.

Remarkably they continue in that vein even when shown direct uncontestable statements to the effect. (Luke 14:16, q.v.) (That raises the question of how they react w.r.t. what they see/read on instruments and in databooks, and similar.)

Their reaction is typically like a politician trying to deny what they said, frequently even including "it doesn't mean that"!

Lewis Carrol summed it up in "Through the Looking Glass"...

Alice laughed. "There's no use trying," she said: "one can't believe impossible things."

"I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

It is a handy way of allowing the universe to explore all possible parameters for the initial conditions. A posteriori it should come as no surprise that we are in a universe where the initial conditions were right for complexity, stars and intelligent life to evolve.

In some ways it isn't much more that the simplification of the full diffraction treatment of photons with Fermat's principle of path of least time to the classic geometric raytracing optics rather than doing a lot of nasty oscillatory integrals and relying on everything except the shortest path and a few diffraction rings nearby cancelling out.

You haven't been right yet. There's no reason anyone should believe you're going to start anytime soon.

Actually, I don't think that follows. The fact that the translations are not perfectly accurate does not prove God did not dictate the Bible. It just means the translations are no more the word of God than the original is. In fact, using language is not a good way to communicate something as important as the "word of God". It is too easy to misinterpret a language even in which you are a native speaker.

Yes, you won't get disagreement from me on that issue. I think when people think they hear God talking, it is mostly that noise that your brain generates when it is absolutely quiet.

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

:) Of course too long in such a situation makes you lose your mind.

Hence it is illegal under the Geneva Conventions, and is only used in third world dictatorships. (Isn't it?) ;}

Who is to stop you?

Typically Bible bashers would like to. (Luckily we don't have religious thought police over here.)

But then I try to open their kids' eyes to what is in the Bible; typical reaction is "does the Bible /really/ say that?". "Don't trust me, read it for yourself here ... and here ..."

By "being right" krw means "agreeing with krw".

We DO have religious thought police. There is Scharia police in practically all islamic states and wherever they feel strong enough. Even here in .de there was a self proclaimed Scharia police in fantasy uniforms that molested non-German looking people. They have been put out of business, but got away cheaply.

In our catholic environment we have the inquisition that has been renamed "Congregatio pro doctrina fidei" since the inquisition had accumulated too much of a bad press. (Really, they only shorted the full name.)

The last burning of a witch was just 200 years ago and we can be pretty sure that ended only because the prosecutors are no longer strong enough.

for stealing milk, putting fire on things & taking a ride with the devil on a pitchfork)

Yes, old Jesuit wisdom: "Bring them young, then we have them forever."

You may smile on the Yacc shepherd with the Buddha and Bruce Lee on his altar. But is he any less credible than a Palestinian sheep herdsmen from early bronze time? The Yacc guy, I have seen him at least personally, and also more of those people. And I liked them.

Gerhard