UKC

In reply to Tall Clare:

A few weeks ago I was standing at the viewpoint at Glacier Point above Yosemite, admiring the view. Behind me I heard an American voice say "Gee, it really confirms that God did this", to which her companion stated "Yeah, it just couldn't be created any other way".

The discussion continued along the lines of that God created Yosemite, and because it was spectacular, this was then evidence that God existed. People are free to believe what they want, but at the same time, I find it very difficult to take people with that kind of reasoning seriously.

I felt the need to discuss glaciology, and various other weathering processes with them, but I had a plane to catch and couldn't hang around, so bit my tongue as I departed. I suspect the conversation, had it taken place, would have had 2 definite outcomes: 1. We wouldn't agree with each other, and 2. I would have missed the plane (I only just made it as it was).

In reply to Tall Clare: I think it's you who is wrong. It is quite obvious to me that you need to have a hole drilled into your head to let the demons out.

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

I think you're probably right about that.

In reply to Tall Clare:

I've had as run in with this tud before - I recall I told him his photo hasd some thing of the tangerine and kettle flex about it.

Isn't he the one who got "moved on" due to meddling with his lady parishioners?

In reply to Tall Clare:
Is it amazing that the moon covers the sun in a solar eclipse, is it also amazing that all meteors that hit the ground are meteorites? Is it amazing that all Ford Mondeos are manufactured in Ford factories or that everyone who is alive today was born at some point?

The world must be a truely wonderous place to someone who is that easily suprised.

In reply to John Rushby:

Not quite - he had an affair with someone. He got cross when our alsatian growled at him whilst he (Mullen) was standing in a wheatfield, having a chat with God.

(n.b. for dog haters, the dog did no more than growl, then carried on its merry way. We chose not to have it put down.)

In reply to Tall Clare: I wonder what this f*cktard has a doctorate in ? I think I can guess... very funny. Thanks for posting : )

In reply to Tall Clare: Well he's written for many publications including the Wall Street Journal, so who are we to doubt the quality of the arse he speaks from?

T.

In reply to John Rushby:

I think you've missed his point; he understands perspective (unlike Dougal). The amazing coincidence is the fact that we get total and not just annular eclipses.

There is no reason the moon has to be at the correct distance to be able to cause an eclipse. If the moon were larger or closer it would also cause an eclipse.

The odds of a moon of (almost) the perfect size, around a habitable planet are low. It seems to me that the same argument for the existence of life elsewhere (huge number of stars x very small chance of life starting) could be used by religious people as evidence of divine intervention.

It happens everywhere, statistically unlikely events (on a per event basis) are often assumed to be the result of luck/god. Think of people winning the lottery - the odds are 13m to 1 but someone does nearly every week because 10m are trying.

In reply to Tall Clare: To be half fair to him, it is nothing more than chance that makes a lunar eclipse so 'perfect'

A few billion years ago it was possibly as close as 15,000 miles from earth. In another few billion, it will have receded so far that there will only be partial eclipses.

I love looking at the world this way. Wee so much as 'solid' when it isn't. We see mountains as timeless, but in the scheme of things, they are nothing more than a blip. Like dropping a stone into water slowed down a billion times.


We just happen to be alive at a time when eclispses happen. I'd say that's coincidence, but it really isn't.

If the moon were a lot closer, its orbit would be quicker. As would the effect of it's pull. So life would find it hard to gain a foothold on a world where the tide might come in and out hourly over a range far far greater than curently exists.

In reply to Tall Clare: Oh sorry we aren't going to discuss it just slag off the religious nutjob for thinking the fact the moon exactly covers the sun was done on purpose by some other life form not because a ball of nothing exploded then magically created loads of stuff which apparently is also mostly nothing as well, then spread out to infinity. Yeah, what a retard.

In reply to Philip: You beat me to it.

In reply to Philip:

I got the point, I was taking the piss.

I think Feynman puts it nicely

You know, the most amazing thing happened to me tonight. I was coming here, on the way to the lecture, and I came in through the parking lot. And you won't believe what happened. I saw a car with the license plate ARW 357. Can you imagine? Of all the millions of license plates in the state, what was the chance I would see that particular one tonight? Amazing

In reply to Tall Clare:

Ok so the way i see it is we currently accept there was nothing absolutely nothing, then in quicker than it takes to say come ere ar Kes, there was stuff everywhere, which we very simply accept was the big bang, a rather dim name really for all the colossal cosmic expansion but that's a whole other subject.

And then if someone was too say there's some dudes out there or maybe even space bunnies who are way more advanced than us earthlings and they can ever create whole planets out of space dust the general contemporary conscious is to call those folk names like religious jetwads, don't you know nobody can be that cleverer, we is all that there is innit, now where's the remote control so i can watch some X factor karaoke proper stars like...

In reply to Tall Clare:
Ha. You don't need a solar eclipse to prove God's existence, you can do that with a humble banana!

youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A&

In reply to johnj: I saw something recently which suggested that there may be no such thing as a big bang.

Instead, they argue, outside of time, space has no meaning, so therefore neither does scale.

The universe is entropic. As it reaches perfect entropy, time and space disappear leaving the stage open for the existing universe to become the embryo for the next one.

To our mind, it would appear that this embryo universe is 'massive'

In fact, it's size has no meaning at all.


I can't claim I've got my head around this, but it did make a sort of sense at the time and had a nice symetry to it.

In reply to Tall Clare:

One of the comments under the article is interesting:

"This morning got off to a happy start. I switched on the gadget as usual to behold the carnage of old wars and the prospect of new ones"

In reply to Tall Clare:

One more thing I find intriguing. The sun is huge and ninety-three million miles away and the small moon is in our backyard, a mere quarter of a million miles away. Yet in an eclipse their discs precisely cover each other. Don’t therefore imagine that anyone designed it that way. It’s just a cosmic coincidence, isn’t it, Professor Dawkins?

It is magical* and it is intriguing, an intriguing coincidence. If we'd evolved a couple of billion years later under a more distant moon we'd still be wondering about the meaning in some other galactic coincidence. What is more interesting is why our brains do this, seek meaning in the meaningless.

*obviously not meant literally
jk

In reply to jonnie3430:

That was me quoting Doug Stanhope

In reply to johnj: Yeah can just imagine those scientists sitting around taking about what a fruitcake he is over lunch then one of them goes off to clone a cow and the other carries on splitting atoms in half in the hope of making a self-sustaining spaceship. The idea of a creator? What a f*cking joke!

In reply to deepsoup:
Ha. You don't need a solar eclipse to prove God's existence, you can do that with a humble banana!
youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yBvvGi_2A&

The humble banana that was created by selective crossing of other plants by people?

In reply to Scomuir:

In reply to Philip:

True.

Leaving religion aside for a moment, its interesting what this says about UFO's, alien abductions and wotnot.

Fun as I'm sure it would be, I just can't believe that kidnapping rednecks from relatively remote bits of the USA and sticking things up their bottoms is much of a tourist attraction for aliens, be they grey, green or whatever.

But being able to stand on the surface of the planet at certain times, look up and see a perfect total solar eclipse, that really *is* special. If there are alien creatures capable of interstellar travel visiting the Earth as tourists, that's where they'll be. Even the weird pervy aliens would take time out from the probing to go and have a look at that wouldn't they?

In reply to Tall Clare:

Burn the witch!

In reply to Tall Clare:

That transit of Venus earlier this year only covered a little bit of the sun. Therefore god does not exist.

In reply to deepsoup:


could be a bunch of students on their gap year. Why mess with traffic cones when you have people.

whenever i see these sorts of arguments I always wonder if the person making them is convinced they are strong on the grounds that when used in person it leaves people speechless. Missing the fact as to why they are left speechless.

In reply to Robert Durran:

By an incredible coincidence I randomly met my best mate on an island off the coast of Belize once, so god does exist.

In reply to Horatio: Everyone's ignoring your rantings so I feel I must 'ave a go.

I don't have a problem with some abstract concept of 'creator', if you want to give that name to the mass of coincidences, physical laws, unknowable phenomena and general weirdness that have resulted in us being here, pondering, then that's fine.

Where I have a problem is the idea that that same force has any consciousness, interest in human affairs, ability to influence human affairs (except at the fundamental level of Sod's law, aka 2nd law of thermodynamics) or any meaningful impact on us at all, really. Least of all when we die.

In reply to jonnie3430:

if this was your best mate... how come you didn't already know they'd be there?

In reply to rallymania: Easier than you think. Me and my partner were once in Mexico near the Guatamala border and received an email from another couple we were quite close to telling us about the holiday they were on in.......... Guatamala.

In reply to Tall Clare:

If you don't follow gods rules he will sentence you to eternal hell.

BUT HE LOVES YOU!

How can anyone following any religion be taken seriously in any kind of way?

Watch Zeitgeist - Religion. Its obvious religion is made up and most religions are in someway connected with eachother, and the stars and sun.

In reply to xplorer:

Are you quoting George Carlin?

In reply to rallymania:

??? God works in mysterious ways...

In reply to Tall Clare:
Like the babel fish, it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that it proves, and therefore disproves, the existence of God.

The argument goes something like this:

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white, and gets killed on the next zebra crossing.

In reply to Tall Clare: He's trolling. If a UKC user posted something like that we would call him out and give him a 2/10.

In reply to Tall Clare:
I've been reading some post-modern arguments lately, and this sounds fairly rational compared to the stuff they get out of their pens...

Anyway, it is a pretty silly column, especially of something that is so incredibly well-documented. The exchange between prof. Lenski and some right-wing conservative was way funnier though...

In reply to Arjen:

THe Lenski email exchange is great - it was with the wack job that runs Conservapedia.

In reply to John Rushby:

It took me ages to be convinced Conservapaedia was genuine.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

Why are they 'rantings'? Why must you 'ave a go'? Why is it clear that everyone's 'ignoring' them?


Well fine believe what you like. I find both theories equally plausible. Can't you see that by ridiculing me you're just as bad as the people you ridicule? Can't you see the group mentality, the group solidarity, the blind faith in what your told, the longing to bring everyone else round to your way of thinking, the offence when they don't. The religion of anti-religion?

In reply to cap'nChino:


There's laws against that: Under Section 127(1)(a) of the Communications Act 2003

(2)A person is guilty of an offence if, for the purpose of causing annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety to another, he— .
(a)sends by means of a public electronic communications network, a message that he knows to be false.
(b)causes such a message to be sent; or .
(c)persistently makes use of a public electronic communications network.

Lock him up! If not for (a) then (c) if he's done it before!

In reply to Horatio:

Finished it for you - you missed the

"scientists are just so closed minded" bit.

Tiddles

J

btw - you need to look up the word "theory".

In reply to Horatio:


Hmmm...

In reply to Horatio:
Can't you see the group mentality, the group solidarity, the blind faith in what your told, the longing to bring everyone else round to your way of thinking, the offence when they don't. The religion of anti-religion?

If you look at threads on here, I think you will find the non-religious spend most of the time disagreeing with each other and are pretty happy to do so.

In reply to Horatio:

Why would he do that? It is you who insists on doing that. He is only believing in things for which there is evidence (whether he likes them or not).

In reply to Horatio: I can't see that I'm ridiculing you at all, there's no attempt at humour in my post.

All I'm doing is expressing my genuine, deeply held but constantly reviewed position regarding some sort of meaningful, transcendental conscious being. I just don't get it.

In reply to deepsoup:

I'm quoting exactly what the religous nuts think.

In reply to MG:


I dont....

In reply to Rob Exile Ward: I was just trying to get Clare to explain why she thought the guy was wrong and a discredits Christians so we could have a deeply philosophical theological debate that would be utterly futile and impossible to win then you just went right out their and accused me of ranting! I didn't feel like I was ranting, maybe I was. Guess you wouldn't know unless you were having a rant.

In reply to Horatio: disaster! someone accused you of ranting! so, like....forgive them

In reply to Horatio:

just this morning, god fixed it for me that gravity didn't work backwards and water didn't go up my nose! Halleluyah!

In reply to Horatio:

Well, he is clearly either ignorant (doesn't know it is a coincidence), stupid (knows it is a coincidence, but still draws ridiculous conclusions), or a dishonest peddler of lies (knows he is wrong but is trying to take advantage of other peoples' ignorance or stupidity to manipulate them).

In reply to Horatio:
So...i 'guess' that being an archbish. of Cantb. takes up less time than being an oil exec, so you're a bit bored and reactivated a niggle account on the diocese mainframe?

In reply to Horatio:
Ok, so instead of just complaining about them scientists, could you provide a rationale of how the opinions expressed in the column actually would actually have some merit?

I don't see any, we're just some rock turning around some dim star, and it is just a coincidence that eclipses happen. I think it is because there's so much stuff happening by chance, that some things 'just happen to work out perfect', where 99.9999999% of the things don't, but we'd rather ignore these.

In reply to Tall Clare:Why didn't God make all the other planet sizes and orbits so that they all line up perfectly for a multiple eclipse? That would have been impressive! Alternatively he could have made them line up in colour order. Why is the Blue planet next to the Red one? that just smacks of sloppiness with the pantone charts on about day 5

In reply to Horatio: 'Oh sorry we aren't going to discuss it just slag off the religious nutjob ... Yeah, what a retard. '

Pretty much a definition of rant to me.

In reply to Arjen:


Ah but you've got to agree that the other 0.0000001% of things are so spookily perfect they couldn't possibly have happened by chance

In reply to Arjen:

Your language is very peculiar. Why do you say:

a) we're just 'some rock'? We're not just 'some rock'. We're a living planet that has fine-tuned itself to near-perfection. How many rocks do that?

b) 'Dim star'. I've no idea what you mean by dim, given the importance of solar energy to life on Earth and its billions of years of reliable energy.

(((This modern, sneering lack of appreciation of just how lucky we are to be where we are really gets to me. Sorry.)))

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: Gordon, you're a clever bloke and all that, and congrats on your recent award, but I'm not entirely convinced you've thought this one through.

It rather sucks the meaning out of a word like 'lucky' if you think it can be applied to everyone who has ever existed ... just because they did.

Actually, come to think of it, that's quite close to the RC position isn't it?

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: Some rock as in one of probably millions of similar planets. Dim star as in not very bright as stars go. Seems pretty clear to me.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Quite possibly very few, but we'd hardly be likely to be sitting marvelling at that fact on one of the billions and billions of cold, uninteresting, lifeless ones.


You've got that completely wrong; appreciating just how much the odds are probably stacked against the emargence of complex life makes it's occurence magnificently more wondrous.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: What is this "near perfection" thing of which you write?

In reply to AdrianC:

We got it into quite a habitable condition and then we mangled it. It's like that process whereby people buy a house, do it up, then have babies who draw all over the walls in wax crayon.

In reply to AdrianC: 'Perfection is a blasphemy in the eyes of God.'

In reply to Tall Clare: Hello! Umm - who got it into a habitable condition?

In reply to Tall Clare: I don't supposed it seemed that perfect for the first 2 million years when everyone struggled to live beyond 40, and for the most part coped with near constant fear, pain and hunger.

In reply to AdrianC:

As a useful space for humans, well, humans did. The dinosaurs might have had less need for motorways and oil platforms.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

And what's more, no internet...

In reply to Tall Clare:

only cox their arms were too short to reach a keyboard....
http://www.zmescience.com/research/studies/t-rex-hunter-not-scavenger-26012...

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

I thought (although I mentioned the rather meaningless word 'luck') that my post was not about that at all.

In reply to AdrianC:

Have you got eyeballs?

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Have you got an appendix?

In reply to MG: or did you have?!

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

Yeah, but they're rubbish. Everything is upside down and I can't see that well in the dark. Bloomi'n brain has to work really hard to let me see at all...

In reply to MG: There's an interesting medical anecdote about appendices...

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: 'lack of appreciation of just how lucky we are '

My mistake.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: Yes. And they're telling me that you want an argument, not a debate. Your loss.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

It's not worth mentioning in the main text though, Stick it in at the end


sorry, temptation was too great

In reply to toad:

<applauds>

In reply to the thread:

ok, i suspect i might regret this, but here goes anyway...

i don't think its as trivial a coincidence as some on this thread would have it. we only have one moon, and its a rather large one in proportion to the earth. its massively the most impressive object in the night sky, and while its difficult to appreciate the significance to early humans from our electric-lit cities, it must have inspired real awe and wonder.

i'm not sure what the window of time is that the moon is exactly the right distance from the earth to eclipse the sun so perfectly that the corona is visible, but it is a small window in the overall time life has been around on earth. it is quite a coincidence that by far the two most significant objects in the sky produce this spectacle at exactly the time in the earth's history when there are beings who will be aware of it; and the effect it must have had on our ancestors who didnt have the advantage of planetary science to explain it is almost impossible to fully understand

its not that there are thousands of moons, or thousands of similarly impressive astronomical spectacles so that it is inevitable that something of similar impact is bound to happen. the odds are pretty long

and yet, coincidence is all it is, of course

but.... if there was a god, and if we were looking for some sign that he had left to say he existed, without having something as obvious as a big sign in fiery letters hanging in the sky saying "i'm heeee-eeere..!!", then i wonder if this isn't exactly the sort of thing that we should be looking for...

cheers

gregor

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:


One trouble with this is that, before we could predict eclipses and thus travel to be in their path, the chances of a random human seeing a total solar eclipse in their lifetime would have been very small, less than 1 in a 1000. Thus the effect on the vast majority of our ancestors would have been zero.

Yes it would have been spectacular for the few who saw one, but the impact would have been comparable to other low-probability, high-impact events, such as a nearby volcano, earthquake or tsunami.

In reply to Tall Clare: The Lunar Laser Ranging experiment has shown that the moon is moving away from the earth at a rate of about two centimeters a year. If you perform a regression you find that 65 million years ago, the moon must have been orbiting the earth at a height of about 20ft, which, if you think about it, explains why the dinosaurs died out (well, the tall ones anyway).

In reply to Coel Hellier:

thought you'd be here sooner or later...!



hmmm. yes, i see what you mean.

but there are hundreds of volcanoes, and earthquakes are pretty common

but only one moon, and at this point in the earth's history its a perfect match for size and distance, to within tolerance of fractions of a per cent

the odds on that are pretty long, and are not offset, as far as i can see, by lots of other similar phenomena. im also not aware of any reason explaining why it should be so from a scientific perspective, unlike, say, the observation that the fundamental properties of the universe seem perfectly tuned to allow matter to form- if there is indeed a multiverse, or an inflationary universe where all other possible combinations of constants exist a long, long way away, then this is a trivial problem

its like god put his stamp on the universe in a way that allowed plausible deniability

well, except that he probably doesnt exist...

cheers
gregor

In reply to MG:

You have now gone on record comparing an eyeball with an appendix. Thank history for the internet, in that I've now been able to archive your comment. Thanks, I'm confident that it will be much appreciated by future historians.

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

ok, a bit of googling and it appear that while the moon's recession means that total eclipses will eventually cease, it will be a while before this happens.

1.4 billion years, apparently

so the odds are much shorter than i was claiming, and not such a stretch on credibility

proof of god's existence will have to wait i guess....



gregor

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:


there is no god as he would have made every earth orbit moon able to creat a perfect solar eclipse.

http://news.discovery.com/space/how-many-moons-does-earth-have-120406.html

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:


The tolerance is much greater than that, for example the variation in the distance of the moon (given the elliptical orbit, and hence annular eclipses) is greater than that. Indeed, wouldn't solar eclipses be similarly impressive (perhaps more so?) if the moon was twice as big (apparent size) as it currently is? And they'd then be seen by most of mankind, unlike now.


One suggestion is the for stable conditions allowing evolution of intelligent life one needs a `binary planet' to stabilize the rotation axis -- without the moon Earth's axis would wander around a lot more and hence climate changes would be more severe. If you have a moon massive enough and close enough to do that, the chances of eclipses are pretty good.

By the way, from memory a couple of Jovian moons are also pretty good matches to the sun (as seen from Jupiter), so the whole thing is not as remarkable as it might appear.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

thanks, coel- very interesting, i've learned a few things this evening

and, on a similar theme, just been watching the horizon programme about the voyager probes which i'd recorded some weeks back- remarkable story, i hadn't fully appreciated how difficult the logistics actually were...

i finally read the link in the OP too- deary me, that drivel got published in a supposed quality newspaper...?!

cheers
gregor

In reply to Tall Clare:

Incredible!

I'm always looking for an excuse to promote Asimov's Nightfall, one of the best sci-fi short stories ever. Would you believe, it's about eclipses and religion.

And lo! A thread about eclipses and religion. It must be a sign...

http://ebookbrowse.com/nightfall-asimov-pdf-d177646383

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:


I imagined Morgan Freeman's voice reading that post (particularly the last paragraph) with string-heavy orchestration in the background.

In reply to Arjen:

As pointed out earlier in the thread the moon has only been in it's current cycle of total lunar eclipse for some hundreds of millions of years. This could have been around the time animals came into existence. There are several theories as to what caused the moon to form but all agree that the moon was once part of the earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon#Formation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolutionary_history_of_life

Ancient Humans built objects that were in some way connected to the sun and stars, think the various pyramids around the world, Stonehenge and other monuments. We could assume that this is a trait of intelligent life.

There is tenuous evidence of ancient structures on the moon.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=structures+on+the+moon&hl=en&prmd=...

The following page details what would happen if humans were wiped from earth tomorrow, most theories I've read seem to think that it would take 25000 years for all traces of humanity to disappear from earth. So if an advanced civilisation had existed on earth for a short time around the time the moon was formed and created it it's likely that they'd be no traces left of their existence, other than the moon and everything on it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aftermath:_Population_Zero#500_years_A.H.

I think it's feasible that the human race in the next couple of thousand years could travel to a distant solar system and remove part of a planet in order to create an orbital body that could accidently or purposefully allow complex life to form. I think if we could do this and set it up to produce an eclipse we probably would, just for the beauty of it.


Also at no point in the article does Dr Mullen state that 'a solar eclipse is clear evidence of God's existence', the closest he comes to it is 'Don’t therefore imagine that anyone designed it that way. It’s just a cosmic coincidence, isn’t it, Professor Dawkins?'. Even the headline of the article is quoted out of context.

In reply to Horatio:
So a cosmic calamity big enough to rip a moon sized object out of a planet will still leave evidence of your house? Bless....

(BTW, if you're trolling, I think you're ace).

In reply to Tall Clare:
I was lounging idly in the garden last weekend when I was supposed to be raking up leaves. I was dreaming of a win at Kempton and my eyes had barely shut when Mrs Num Num loomed over me with her rolling pin, creating a kind of solar eclipse, the air went cold and what followed was clear evidence of the existence of the devil.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: I didn't in fact. The more you post on here the more I think you are in fact a 'closet creationist'.

In reply to MG:

That's tricky, since I don't believe in God. Closet scientist perhaps.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth: So you say but then describe the world as near perfect and get prickly when it is pointed out it isn't. You also tend to read things very literally and miss analogy.

In reply to Tall Clare:

Interesting comment that the moon is gradually moving away from the earth and it is just co-incidence that it exactly co-incides with the perceived size of the sun. In the future it will appear in an eclipse as a dot over the sun.

I recall being disappointed that during a topal eclipse I was not plunged into total darkness, but just a strange half light lacking colour definition. When I used to read stories of explorers in the pot being saved from canabals due to accurate predictions that they could turn day into night, I imagined total darkness and presumably because in the past the moon was closer to earth, the loss of light was noticeably more significant?

In reply to John Rushby:
Magic!

In reply to AdrianC:

Yes, I agree that it was careless of me to talk about 'perfection' as there is no standard to measure it by. What I was referring to was its ability to fine-tune itself in order to persist through millennia.

To work now.

In reply to Tall Clare:

I think the fact that someone admit to being Christian at all makes me struggle to take them seriously.

<replace Christian with religion of choice, especially Scientology, snigger>

In reply to Robert Durran:

You seem to be saying roughly what I am. I happen to one of those who believes that (statistically) there must be millions, perhaps billions, of earthlike planets in the universe that support life.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:


'Near perfection' by what measure? It's only in the last 10 years or so we've even been able to prove there are other chunks of rock out there beyond our own back yard, probably more than we can comprehend. The living earth is rich, fascinating and unfathomably complex but to call it perfect seems odd to me.


The sun is a dim star in the grand scheme of things. Not the dimmest by any stretch but just because it looks bright to us doesn't mean it is!

Who's sneering? Our world is amazing and our responsibility, I don't need a creator myth to understand or appreciate that, in fact quite the contrary.

jk

In reply to jkarran:

I'm sure coel will provide more reliable information, but I thought that the sun was relatively bright as stars go, on the basis that there are far far more small dim red dwarf stars than blue giants

And is Gordon referring to the goldilocks effect, that the earth is 'just right' in many ways, and seems to have feedback loops to keep it that way

None of which is proof of any divine hand at work, but given the number of ways the planet could have been rendered uninhabitable, perfect isnt an entirely inappropriate word

Cheers
Gregor

In reply to jkarran:

We seem to be at cross purposes. See my post of 8:12
I don't need a creator myth either.

In reply to Horatio:


Could have been... but isn't.


So do bower birds.


No there isn't.


Erm... I'm lost for words!


It's a statement of belief in the form of a rhetorical question. It's pretty clear.

jk

In reply to Tall Clare:

If god wanted to show his presence by a display of eclipses and such like he'd probably have put his chosen species on a planet like Saturn with rings, a moon bigger than Mercury and 60 smaller ones. And maybe in a system with two suns.

Also, he probably wouldn't have waited 14 billion years between creating the universe and sending his son to tell his chosen species what it was all about.

In reply to Horatio:

Eyup dude, what you've got to remember on this forum is most folk haven't read much of the authors of what is called conspiracy theory, they just read the alternative media tabloid translations of it which is easy to pick holes in and get to the whole tinfoil meme.

So what we still have is current non believers trying to disprove a pre scientific representational of a Roman translation from a Hebrew translation from ancient Sumerian and Sanskrit text.

So when those Vikings of the counter scene movement like Hoagland, Maxwell, Sitchin, Daniken, etc, etc et el.... start to translate the early writings to modern text they find there where all kinds of accents which were lost through translation, so Our Ancient God or gods maybe was never this impression of religion... Because one thing is for sure whatever happened back there can't have all simply been made up because the history of it is just faaaaar too robust.

For example, it probably never said God Created Adam and Eve, they say it reads more like The Gods created the Adams and Eves, which brings it closer to the legends of the Anunnaki, which needed to create a hybrid slave race who among other things may have built the pyramids with high technology.

One thing is for sure, the history of this planet has large periods of forgotten times.

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:


Fair point, we may be outnumbered by dimmer stars but we're certainly not orbiting one of the brightest.


I appreciate that but in just our own galaxy there could be 2x10^9 loosely earth-like planets. What are the odds we're on the only 'perfect' one.


Granted we're very well suited to each other (life and earth) but even on earth there are lots of 'imperfect' habitats in which life thrives. Maybe our idea of what's required for life is still too narrow.

jk

In reply to TheDrunkenBakers:

Which is a much more interesting reflection on your intellect then theirs.

In reply to johnj: Where did the "high technology" go after the pyramids were built?

In reply to Sir Chasm:

Yes an interesting question one which I've often thought of, obviously this hi tech was so far out that they'd fight wars over part Seas, maybe even give dudes the powers to raise people from the dead, matrix kind of stuff really. I believe religious myth refers to such tech as Arc of the covenant, it's probably now in a deep underground base somewhere out west.

In reply to johnj: Perhaps the lizards are looking after it.

In reply to Postmanpat:

There, fixed that for you. No need to thank me, you're welcome.

In reply to johnj:

Did they bury the art of punctuation "out west" as well?

In reply to Sir Chasm:

Perhaps the Greys had a battle with the Lizards over who owned it and when they weren't looking a black ops team of special ops trained ex circus performing Monkeys Leopard crawled in Ninja styleee and nicked it?

In reply to Postmanpat:

No they speak in da code catch up at the rear hooah

In reply to Tall Clare:

disturbing - sums up religion really.

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:


Yes, the sun is pretty "military medium" as stars go, type G2 is in the middle of the spectral sequence. But, as you say, there are vastly more dim stars, so our sun is brighter than the median (though much fainter than the big, flashy stars that are 10^5 times brighter).

In reply to jkarran: You're not really giving any counter argument, you're just stating my facts are wrong. I provide a link which estimates the moon came into existence hundreds of millions of years ago and another that estimates simple animals formed 600 million years ago. Coel gives us a good hypothesis as to why the moons current orbit allows life to form on earth, and I suggest that the solar eclipse we see today is the same one (more or less) that all life on earth has seen. And get, Could have been...but isn't. ??

If you type 'structures on the moon' into google images you get 5 million results yet you dismiss what I describe as 'tenacious evidence' with no explanation.

Around 400BC the idea of atoms was first thought up with no evidence at all. A mere flight of the imagination. Now from that time until the 19th century there wasn't any evidence to support this theory but the theory was proven scientifically and is now accepted knowledge. I'm not saying that my theory is true, I'd say a cosmic coincident is probably more likely. I'm simply imagining how that could have come to be, and how we might not have realised it. Why not (for want of a better cliche) open our minds and think about and discuss what he's saying, something inspiring might come out of it. Instead we think of the most witty ways to ridicule him because he disagrees with our deeply held beliefs. I don't get it.

All his statement said to me was Don’t therefore imagine that anyone designed it that way Imagine someone designed it that way It’s just a cosmic coincidence, isn’t it, Professor Dawkins? is it a coincidence Professor Dawkins? I've read The God Delusion and I respect Dawkin's view, but it doesn't wholly convince me that life on earth wasn't designed. I agree with everything he has to say about religion but find his writing too biased. Yet I completely agree with The Selfish Gene, it's one of my favorite books.

In reply to johnj:

It seems so... Oh well, might as well try talking to people and standing up for the Rev. Good for the Karma, cherish me soul ect. I'll probably get burned at a stake. Lol. Oh no wait, I'm a Pagan, I'll be fine

In reply to Horatio:


Perhaps that's because your ideas are too bonkers to take seriously.


Nope, the moon is vastly older than simple animals. The moon formed only about 30 million years after the formation of earth, so both the earth and moon are 4.5 billion years old (any difference is in the next figure 4.54 billion v 4.53 billion or so).


The idea of an "advanced civilisation" at the time that the moon was formed is bonkers, and the idea of civilisation-made objects on the moon (before last century) is bonkers.


Bonkers ideas don't need refuting, it's up to you to find some evidence for them if you have any.

In reply to Coel Hellier:


Given that the universe is lets say pretty old or 14 and a half billion and us Earth humans are pretty young lets say 1 million from when we were tiny lickle fish floating in a Sea of meth


So do the math prof, and work out how many civilizations could have evolved and died in that time. Then we have a rich habitable planet with a fine smaller brother with a big cow on it. Then to say "and the idea of civilisation-made objects on the moon (before last century) is bonkers....."

Isn't bonkers its just very childish.

In reply to johnj: Can you point to some evidence of previous civilisations with the capability of reaching the moon?

In reply to Sir Chasm:

Well lets start with the basic big clue bang smack in the center of the landmass on Earth.

In reply to johnj:

As I said, bonkers ideas don't need refuting. It's up to those advocating such ideas to produce evidence for them. So far they haven't. Thus they remain in the "bonkers" category.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

You might also like to point out that while "structures on the moon" gets 5 million images results "moon made of cheese" gets 6.8 million.

Also "I am god" get 1.7 billion results! So that proves it.

In reply to johnj: Sorry, you need to explain that a bit more.

In reply to Sir Chasm:

Do you need more proof?
youtube.com/watch?v=gu0o6u1VmGE&

In reply to Sir Chasm:

No explanations required from my end, I'll have adult conversations with those on here when people want to.

In reply to johnj:

I'm up for an adult conversation, but I can't work out what you mean by landmass in the centre. You obviously don't mean centre of the volume as that's the core, so centre of the surface of a sphere is a bit confusing?

In reply to johnj:


Ah right, so when you're asked for evidence you make a cryptic remark that no-one knows what it refers to, and then when asked for an explanation you evade again.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

Maybe you need to do some reading then.

In reply to Coel Hellier: Who is the arbiter to decide which ideas are 'bonkers' and which ideas aren't?

Not that I agree about structures on the moon, or the eclipse being proof of God etc., just interested who decides which ideas are bonkers and which aren't.

In reply to owlart:

Anyone with a doctorate. They whisper it to you when they bash you on the head with the book. You're allowed to call people loonies and declare their ideas bonkers. You might have to have your robes on at the time (I'm not sure).

In reply to johnj:

What did you mean by that? I'm not sure what you mean by the centre of the landmass on Earth - do you mean the centre of the Earth, or something else?

In reply to owlart:


It's easy, non-bonkers ideas are those for which, when asked, advocates present you with evidence for them.

Bonkers ideas are those for which the advocates are crackpots who just evade and weasel when you ask them about evidence.

In reply to johnj: Read what? Do you have any titles or links?

In reply to johnj: I'm really enjoying this thread, please don't back out now - there are people who are genuinely interested in what your 'centre of the mass' comment meant.

In reply to Horatio:


Because they are. The moon is an order of magnitude older than animal life on earth. Yes, we've developed to live on a world who's rhythms are regulated by its large close moon but the moon didn't trigger the development of animals.


I provide a link which estimates the moon came into existence thousands of millions of years ago...

Corrected that for you.


I like the idea of tenacious evidence Smartphone type or a strange definition of evidence?

I get over 8 million results if I type 'lizard people' into Google, what does that prove? Delusional people are prolific typists?


What point are you making here, that people without evidence occasionally guess close enough to right we can later fit our discoveries to their predictions? Nostradamus would be another good example. We love to do this, it says far more about the human mind than it does about ancient wisdom or mystical powers.


I'm not mocking him and I'm not mocking you. He's entitled to his views, as entitled to them as you are to yours and I am to mine. That doesn't mean I have to agree with either of you and it certainly doesn't mean we're all equally right.

jk

In reply to Coel Hellier:

If you type 'moon made of cheese' into Google you get 25,600,000 results

Who'd have thunk it?

In reply to johnj:


I've read this three times and each time I'm left scratching my head. What on earth are you alluding to?

jk

In reply to jkarran: he's trying to be clever in referring to the pyramids.

In reply to gramee:

That's useless evidence. See further up. You have to put the search into Google Images then you get photographic proof!

In reply to jkarran: His point of reference is what looks like pyramids on the moon and the great pyramid on earth.

What he doesn't explain is Kailash

http://www.sacredsites.com/asia/tibet/images/mt-kailash-500.jpg

Can African elephants speak to Indian elephants?

In reply to Philip: Yes, but it's a trunk call.

In reply to ripper:

Ok this is my last post cos i have a job to do and this would just take up to much time.

so if i type into the great library called the internet with

what's at the center of the landmass of earth

i get pages of stuff about the pyramids

bearing in mind i started reading about this stuff in 2006 as it fascinates me

so when reading on the blocks in the kings chamber are around 70 tonne and machined to modern engineered tolerances and been a design engineer i'd really like to know how they did this, the current theory states with ropes and pulleys, excuse me while i cough BULLSHIT....

Have a nice day ya'll ;+)

In reply to johnj: Troll, 6/10. Drew people in, but points deducted because you keep returning and nobody has got upset.

In reply to johnj: The reason why the pryamids are so amazing, and its so hard to comprehend from a modern view how they were done is because the civilisation that built them wasnt busy fighting wars and had a surplus of food so they were able to throw lots of people at the construction and get it done, like China with the three gorges dam, no crazy explainations just a big workforce.

In reply to johnj: genuine question - which Ithink someone has already asked - given that the earth is a globe, how can any one point on it's surface be more 'central' than any other? I guess Egypt is probably the centre of most 2d world map projections, but that hardly makes it the actual centre of the landmass of the earth. does it?
please don't make it your last post this is such fun

In reply to jkarran:


Is that right? I'd have thought that the number of earth size planets discovered so far was too small to allow accurate extrapolation, but I'd be happy to be corrected on that

How many of them are in the correct zone to allow water to exist in liquid phase and have a large satellite like the moon? plus being big enough to retain an atmosphere and tectonic activity? Plus a large gas giant like Jupiter protecting the inner solar system from bombardment? Could be that we are more unusual than we think.

And it's 'perfection' appears to be a product of life itself, changing the atmosphere to be oxygen rich, but not too rich

Again none of this needs a creators hand, and is all the more marvellous for that, but looking at our neighbours, there are many more ways for a planet to develop that will not sustain life than ways that do....


I think this turns on how we are using the word perfect.... I ssuspect we are actually saying something very similar to each other....

Cheers

Gregor

In reply to johnj:



Just because some cranks claim the pyramids are at the "center of the landmass of earth" (whatever that means) doesn't mean they are.


Just because some cranks claim they are "machined to modern engineered tolerances" doesn't mean they are.

Hint: Don't believe everything you read on the internet, or in crank books.

In reply to Red Rover:


Also, their agriculture was not only able to generate food surpluses but it was highly seasonal (based on the flooding of the Nile), so for some months of the year the large workforce had little to do.

In reply to johnj:

Ok, i'll take this one.

People go on about pyramids, the accuracy, the difficulty etc.

Let's take accuracy.

First, setting out.

A modern construction job is set out using very modern equipment usually to an accuracy or around +- 10mm for the steel frame.
Much higher accuracy can be achieved, but it would be pointless because steel from a rolling mill also has inaccuracies. So we use the cladding (in whatever material) to lessen these discrepancies.
This is a purely commercial decision.
To make steel totally accurate and set out to better tolerances would take a lot more time and money than simply building in some tolerance in the cladding.

A pyramid can be set out with nothing more than a few sticks and some string. To a VERY high accuracy. Given time.
To orient the pyramid, over the course of a year you wait for whatever it is you want to align it with to come up over the horizon, or, if it's the sun at midday, for it to reach zenith, and you plant a stick. Do that for a year and you've got a record of your object.

To set out the pyramid you need a 345 triangle. The egyptians knew about these.
A bit of string will suffice.
You set out one side using three sticks. When they are perfectly aligned, you have a straight line.
do this a few times if you like. Then if there are any errors, take the average (much like a cocked hat in navigation)

Now set out a right angle. Do the same error checks.
Set out the rest of the square.
check the diagonals.

Put up some offsets.



Now you need a load of blocks.
At the quarry, cut your block to a chosen accuracy. Bring it to site (and there have been quite literally hundreds of experiments to show that you can very easily move 10 ton blocks with a 20 man team)
On site, get it roughly into place. Use another stick and run it along the block already in place and draw a line on say, a plank of wood which corresponds to the surface of the existing block.
Transfer this line to your new block and cut to shape.
Bear in mind that whilst SOME blocks are very heavy, you'll note MOSt of the pyramid is actually made of very manageble sized blocks for speed of work.
As your pyramid grows, build an effing great big ramp.

We still do quite amazing things like this in construction now.
I built a 3000 ton cantelevered steel roof structure which was entirely built outward from a hub some 150 feet in the air. As each piece of steel was placed, it already had access gantries bolted to it. Once in place, a man goes up, removes the guard rail on the first piece of steel and he now has access to the new piece. At the end of the job, it's all dismantled and taken away.


There is no aspect of building a pyramid which presents ANY real problem to me.
Give me enough money and I will build you one.


though........... why would you want to? They're shite.
They take millions of tons of rock, millions of man hours and a project time measured in decades to produce a structure so badly designed, it can only hold a few rooms, and some of them collapsed under their own weight.
Others had to be re designed mid build in order to stop them collapsing.

The pyramids are a great social engineering accomplishment. They are not really great engineering achievements.


All of the questions you raised over the building of pyramids has been answered by experimentation, not just by me here.

In reply to Coel Hellier:


and even if true (which i doubt in this case) there are some superb craftsmen even today who can craft to exacting standards, examples being gunsmiths. Its just that talent is comparatively rare and their work also takes a lot of time.

In reply to ripper:

Hello ripper, ok this is defiantly my last post, no you are correct any point could be deemed center of land mass, but as applies to many scientific procedures the role of the observer becomes a part of the experiment and in the 2D world any fool such as me can see where the center is no doubt its just a coincidence and them slaves had no one wanting to kill them so they put down over a million 1 tonne or above rocks in around 20 years (yeah do the math on that one prof!), just cos some wacked out king wanted a giant castle for his dead body, yeah that one is proper bonkers on a scale of bonkersness its just become a whole new game changer.... go back to sleep dude x

Because then I can dock my space craft on to it. Obviously. D'uh.

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:


I'm not sure. I thought it was xkcd ran a blog post quite crudely estimating the number two different ways (based on two recent papers) and coming to two similar figures but I can't for the life of me find it again. Maybe it wasn't xkcd, I suspect it was a link I followed out of one of the 'what if' pages.


We thought we were totally unique until we recently built telescopes able to suggest otherwise.

I don't know how many are genuinely earth like, it was just an estimate. Quite a few would seem to be a pretty safe bet if 2Bn loosely Earth-like size/orbit-radius/star-type planets per galaxy is anywhere near reality.


Seems true but we don't have a very big sample size yet though do we.


I imagine so
jk

In reply to Philip:

Makes you despair for the future of humans though, doesn't it!

In reply to jkarran:

Apologies, I've missed a link out there

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse#Final_totality

I was referring to the sentence 'Hundreds of millions of years in the past, the Moon was too close to the Earth to precisely occlude the Sun as it does during eclipses today; and over a billion years in the future, it will be too far away to do so'. So the moons eclipse orbit could have coincided with the development of simple then complex life on this planet which the link early stated happened 600 million years ago, backed up by Coel's statement that the moons current orbit stabilises the climate on earth. That and the total eclipse is a big enough coincident for me to explore the possibility that it was designed.

In reply to Horatio:


So now we're talking civilisations with the capability of constructing a moon?

In reply to johnj: Can I have some of what you've been smoking?

In reply to Horatio:

You are becomming confused.
Mobile animal life did not arrise BECAUSE the moon eclipses the sun almost perfectly.

It's the other way around. Land based mobile animal life was not possible when the moon was too close because of tidal influence.
however, two other things to consider is that:
(a) The moon was a lot closer and the eclipse NOT perfect when mobile animal life formed.
(b) The moon is not the only factor. Other factors include a toxic atmosphere (changed by stromatolites) and the fact that the Earth was vastly more geolicially active, which did not allow for a stable ecosystem to develope.
In fact, it's speculated that some of the great extinctions were due to volcanic activity.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

Everyone has a pyramids theory, and mine is that they were mainly to keep people busy during the quiet season when the farms didnt need any work. Having a big chunk of the population wandering around with nothing to do would probably lead to trouble, so the people in power probably thought 'we need something to keep them busy so they don't have time to challange our leadership, might as well make a big pile of stones'.

Or something like that

In reply to Philip:

damnit!! *Presents clever stool to Phillip*

My bad, I missed yours, I bow before you

In reply to Red Rover:

Pyramid hypothesis or conjecture, rather than theory, would be more accurate for the stuff like this

youtube.com/watch?v=Kz4Alt1S9vI&

In reply to no_more_scotch_eggs:

Found it:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/10/29/how-many-habitabl...
Linked from: http://what-if.xkcd.com/4/

My memory was out by a bit and it could still be very wrong but it is interesting.

In reply to johnj:

Surely a) that is entirely arbitrary depending on how you orient the map and b) subject to plate tectonics ie it will change?

In reply to MJH:

I don't get this either.
So far as I'm aware, there is no absolute 'centre of the landmass of Earth'

If by this they mean 'centre of the landmass as calculated by Mercator projection'
then it's totally meaningless. For a start, Mercator projection has only been around a few hundred years, and second, if you slice the map on a different meridian you'd get a different 'centre'?

In reply to johnj:

It's rather well documented that lots and lots of people spent hundreds of years, vast sums of money and employed thousands of people to build large buildings for no other purpose than the glory of their god. There's one in most cities. In fact its still going on in Barcelona - Segrada Familia won't be finished for another 20-odd years.

Given the leaders in Egypt were seen as gods, why is it so implausible that exactly the same occurred thousands of years ago as was clearly, obviously and certainly done hundreds of years ago? (and is still going on now).

In reply to johnj:
Small correction (I'm a biologist, not an astrophysics guy), the first animals came on land about 600m years ago, and we as primates have evolved for some ~7m years, so your numbers are a bit off.
And yes, an idea requires to have evidence, you can't just stipulate something and don't back it up.

In reply to johnj:


Sorry, wrong. The centre of the world on 2-D maps is of course Jerusalem, as the medieval map-makers put it ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hereford_Mappa_Mundi ). The Nile Delta is way off-centre (location 16 on the map). Any fool knows that!

In reply to johnj:

Oh, johnj, please come back - I'm 'defiantly' missing your posts on this subject. The rest of day will be so boring without them...

In reply to Coel Hellier:

Yes prof well done, what's a few clicks between star systems, but well spotted, 4/10 for pointing out the obvious.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

Well that's wrong! According to Eratosthanes, in about 220BC, the centre of the world was somewhere between the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf (but certainly not in Egypt).

Alternatively, the Orbis Terrarum of 20AD put the centre of the world somewhere in the Mediterranean, between Greece and Cyprus (also not in Egypt).

Mappa Mundi indeed - bunch of Johnny-come-latelys!

In reply to ripper:

It's ok I only went away for a little while back to have fun with these programmed er I mean edjucatedered cats

In reply to tony:


all wrong.
The centre of the world is me.

In reply to johnj: what the f*ck are you on about?

In reply to johnj:

You're kind of missing the point here.

There have been many different map systems through the ages.

Each one would give you a different 'centre'

Even based on the maps we use today, all you have to do is choose a different meridian and you will have a different centre of landmass.

It's completely meaningless.

In reply to Wonko The Sane: obviously to most relatively non-bonkers people it is indeed completely meaningless as you say. But even if one was to insist that there is such a thing, surely the centre of the earth's surface would have to be either one of the poles, or maybe the confluence of the equator and Greenwich Meridian? Again, none of these are in Egypt.
I do hope he's not finished yet, I love this thread...

In reply to johnj:

You missed out the word "sheeple"....

In reply to ripper:

I sometimes wish I were bonkers too!!

It does seem a much easier way of being. you come out with some idiotic tripe which is either plain wrong, an outright lie or a pic n mix of truth and speculation, and when someone half rational picks holes in it, you simply stick your fingers in your ears and go off smiling spouting the same rubbish to the next person, leaving the rational person scratching their head thinking 'what the fcuk???'

In reply to Wonko The Sane: yeah - a bit like being religious I spose

In reply to Coel Hellier: big shout out for al Idrisi. From 1154, and with Jerusalem at the centre, and south at the top!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Al-Idrisi%27s_world_map.JPG

And he had the coolest boss in history - King Roger the second!

In reply to toad: That maps pretty accurate for 900 years ago.

In reply to Red Rover: and mostly from secondary data - he drew it mostly from interviews with other travellers. It's an outstanding piece of work, though It would be quite tricky to upload a 2m disk of solid silver into your sat nav.

In reply to ripper:

The bonkers thing is center of landmass is such an obvious straw man to which the cats tripped over their whiskers trying to disprove that take us away from the deeper relevance of the construction. Center of landmass could be anywhere, its recorded perspective just happens to be very close to those so so accurately built shapes that they knocked up for fun back then as they didn't have council telly to watch the world go by on.

In reply to Tall Clare: He has a go at science in another of his blog posts

'The idea that the world is a closed materialistic and deterministic system is only a supposition. It ain’t necessarily so. The dogma of cause and effect will take you a long way, but enter the world of quantum mechanics and the concept of causes and effects is meaningless. Materialism died with the coming of Planck, Bohr and Heisenberg.'

From this one
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/petermullen/100184489/whether-or-not-near...

In reply to johnj: Eh??

Then why bring it up?

Let's assume for a moment that the pyramids are somewhere near the centre of the landmass.......... as described in whichever map.

does it not occur that generally, those making the maps put themselves (or something they consider important) at the centre of those maps?

Is it coincidence that the prime meridian runs through the Royal Observatory?

Or was the meridian put where the observatory is?

No idea why you brought the subject up!

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

why bring it up, for shit and giggles really, you've got to remember this is just a discussion forum, nobody weather they think they are are proving or disproving owt on these forums really. Folk read contribute or twitch from behind their keyboards some even use punctuation and the world keeps spinning dude x

In reply to johnj:

So how come when you type it into Google you gets loads of pages about pyramids? Isn't that like kinda weird and spooky and all that new-age hippy dipshit bollocks?

In reply to johnj:

Wasn't it proven recently that it wasn't down trodden slaves (a la hollywood films) but employed craftsmen that built the pyramids. I'm sure slaves were included but, again, not in the same way films have portrayed them.

In reply to johnj:

I suppose some of us prefer our discussion to be relevent and rational, unless it's playful banter of course. But didn't see the map stuff as either!

People do sometimes prove things on this (and I'm sure other) forum........... quite a few times I've learned something new or realised my thinking may be wrong on a subject.

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

A shorter way of saying this is, "You can't educate pork".

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

It is rational, my claim is any of the theories which currently describe how they built the pyramids are woefully woefully out of date.

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

I'm starting to change my thinking too - I can't help but wonder if the existence of a thread as insanely entertaining as this one is proof that we're being controlled by some benevolent higher power...

In reply to johnj:

Yet I've just told you that I am able to reproduce all of those tehcniques with simple tools.

Nowhere have you said how or why the theories are out of date.

A pyramid is very easy to set out with the same accuracy as the originals using some sticks and string.
It's actualy been tested.
As has moving the blocks........ I've watched it being done.

Just saying 'it's out of date' is meaningless.

In reply to ripper:

Or perhaps, trolls.

In reply to Tony Naylor:

Ha!
Well i've learned that recently the hard way!

In reply to johnj:


I'll bite. On what basis are they 'out of date'?
jk

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

if it was so meaninglessness why did you respond to it Sherlock.

<note that no question mark illustrates this is a rhetorical question>

In reply to johnj:

Curiosity.

even though I am 46 years old and have managed to learn many things...... I still have no handle on how some people's minds can dismiss fact in favour of irrationality and flights of fancy.

Blows me away, 'dude'

In reply to jkarran:

If i was to tell you why you wouldn't learn anything, first you need to become a pyramid geek read all that so called conspiracy shiz and look at the evidence and then when enough people have studied the evidence we can formulate some questions and derive some possible scenarios of build technique

In reply to johnj:

Ah. that old chestnut again.

I am not sure if you are simply trolling or just lack the skills to back up the nonsense you come out with.
I fond both a bit dull so leave you to it.

In reply to johnj:

It's called conspiracy shit for good reason. Because it's shit.
jk

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

splendid

In reply to Tall Clare: Ok you pseudo-scientific sherlocks - you might not believe there's anything unusual about the building of the pyramids but you can't deny that this pyramid power thing is some pretty wack shit (if you doubt the exisitence of pyramid power, search google and get over 5 million hits, pretty conclusive eh?).
Wikipedia says this: "With this power, model pyramids are said to preserve foods, sharpen or maintain the sharpneses of razor blades, improve health (some people 'were so energized that they could not cope with the dynamo effects they experienced'), function 'as a thought-form incubator', trigger sexual urges, and cause other dramatic effects."
of course it said more too but this was the good bit.

In reply to johnj: So just consider that we don't all have time to do that and point us to the summary version or even better tell us what you really think without trying to hide behind a lack of anything to support your claims.

In reply to ripper:



As ever, RationalWiki is helpful on this matter.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Giza_pyramids#Power_station_theory

In reply to MG:

fine if you want to limit yourself to believing only in the rational

In reply to Wonko The Sane:
Sounds like you know your stuff about buildings, so a serious question - are the tunnels/channels that run through some of the pyramids at 45 degrees easy to do? I'm thinking of those half metre square thingies.

In reply to MJH:

There is no summary version just a lot of varied theories, one been that the pyramids were built by technology not currently believed to exist, the evidence which is the structures themselves. And all those crazy biblical stories, for those stories to become so robust they have to have some basis in actual historical events.

I'm not a crazy nutjob just an engineer who looks at evidence and has a lot of unanswered questions, and when I ask these questions I get ridiculed hence this piss taking stand I'll continue to take.

In reply to johnj:


I think people are taking the piss not primarily because you present strange ideas but because when asked about why you believe they are credible, rather than pointing at the evidence in a helpful way, or arguing a case, you are just evasive.

In reply to johnj:

But when people point out that there might be answers to your questions you're not very interested.

In reply to MG: well thats the give and take of forum life for you

In reply to Mr Powly: because nobodies answered the questions as i haven't asked any

In reply to johnj: So there are lots of competing theories and you personally have unanswered questions. Not a problem - why not ask those questions rather than adopt a "piss taking stand" with people that engage you in fair debate?

As Wonko says it is just plain not true that the pyramids could not be recreated, albeit the exact technology may no longer be the same (in the same way that any number of technologies with the same end result will have changed in 5000 years).

In reply to johnj: Well, if you enjoy being ridiculed, carry on.

In reply to johnj:

Problem with this is it has been proven without the need for "technology not currently believed to exist". This hypothesis (as a theory is proven) has been debunked by modern day engineers.


Quite possibly - for example, the floods - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070907150931.htm



But you haven't looked at the evidence - you have looked at the conspiracy - UKC people are asking for the evidence you cite but you have not offered any as such.

In reply to MJH:

thats just one mans rather simple sound bite, and i never said the pyramids could not be recreated, this breakdown of points till we reach null changes nothing

In reply to MG: cool

In reply to MG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_astronauts

In reply to grumpybearpantsclimbinggoat:

And you've just made assumptions

In reply to johnj:

But it isn't - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080328104302.htm

In reply to johnj:

as have you.

In reply to johnj: No, it was a genuine attempt to once again engage you in something interesting rather than descending into name calling.

In reply to johnj:


Which is a claim not really supported by the evidence and hence we can knock off one of those theories. Whats next?


not necessarily. Some may be based on some fact others so corrupt as to be unrecognisable.
For example we can be fairly sure the dead saints didnt walk the streets of Jerusalem during an earthquake. Unless you can think of some reason that wouldnt have been recorded apart from in one of the gospels?

In reply to grumpybearpantsclimbinggoat:


nothing new in that one

In reply to MJH: Name calling started way back, we can speak about this properly in the future maybe

In reply to dissonance:

I don't know I wasn't there

In reply to johnj:


So which "crazy biblical stories" are "robust" enough that they imply historical events that are not just the usual run-of-the-mill stuff?

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

I thought the jury was still out on that one - I don't think anyone can realistically put a figure on the odds of life emerging on any given planet. It might be astronomically(!) small. Then again it might not.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Yes, indeed the jury is still out. That's why I said it was a belief of mine. Given approx number of stars in universe (I think v roughly 300 billion stars in our galaxy and 400 billion galaxies in the known universe - IIRC, not not have), even if the chances of life on in a solar system were only 1 in 400 billion that would leave 300 billion planets with life on them.

In reply to Tall Clare:
Earlier today I was sitting with my feet up at the garden table enjoying a box of Mrs Num Num's Ferro Rochers that I had snaffled when I was supposed to be scrubbing the wheelie bin. Suddenly, she loomed over me with her rolling pin causing a kind of solar eclipse and all the birds stopped tweeting and the air went chill. What followed was clear evidence of the existence of Beelzebub.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Not just life on planets but on moons too.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

Well if we take the context of what part of the discussion I was dealing with it would be the stuff about Egypt and the removal of gods word in the arc of the covenant as I mentioned earlier in the thread. Now the box which contained the so called ten commandments when you read a bit more into it turns out its very much like a big capacitor and anyone who got too close to it got fried, then they needed to construct a special area around it to stop it killing people, sounds a bit radioactive to me....

.....skip forward a few thousand years and the rich men from western Europe were all over the parish searching the holy land for gods word and generally having a good old battle....

skip forward a thousand years or so and when ''Napoleon on his visit to the great pyramid. He asked to be left alone in the King’s chamber. When he emerged, it was reported that he looked visibly shaken. When an aide asked him if he had witnessed anything mysterious, he replied that he had no comment, and that he never wanted the incident mentioned again. Years later, when he was on his deathbed, a close friend asked him what really happened in the King’s chamber. He was about to tell him and stopped. Then he shook his head and said, "No, what's the use. You'd never believe me." As far as we know, he never told anyone and took the secret to his grave. (It is interesting to note that there is an unsubstantiated story that Napoleon had hinted that he was given some vision of his destiny during his stay in the King's Chamber).''(1)

.... skip forwards a 100 years and the Nazi's were all over the parish looking for ancient holy artifacts.....

......skip forward half a century and Saddam was digging up a load of ancient Mesopotamia, to get some marsh Arabs of his land, and us the west went and blew the shit out of the place then filled all the swamps in and handed it back to Iraq

Then as I said before some of the stories are so robust that the book still sells well and well over a billion people believe it Verbatim to this day, so it brings me to the conclusion either that the whole world is insane, or there is so much more knowledge held by certain parties and the rest of us are kept in the dark and broadcast a daily soap opera called the news, and if we question certain theories which are held as fact it properly trips folk out and all you get is ridicule. So if that is the case I may as well keep on reading about it

I always loved that story about Galileo trying to make a dog look through his telescope at the moons of Jupiter because he said something like if another creature had seen the moons and the bright light was a planet like ours the whole world wouldn't think he was so crazy....


apologies for the obvious mis-quotes got to keep you pedants in new fun discussion topics after all, making bits up about the Nazis, I stole that bit from Indy don't you know Hollywood never tell us the truth by hiding it right in plain sight so someone can call our bluff saying doood you've just watched too much Stargate spark up another doob and listen to some more electric wizard or whatever other doom bands get yer high, and generally thinking the world is a giant egg.

x


(1)http://www.gizapyramid.com/history.htm

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

You're 47.

In reply to Jamming Dodger:

Are you American or just a Brit with an irony bypass?

In reply to Postmanpat: ....Eh? I think it was you who missed the irony there
Im still waiting to hear about how the inside of the pyramids was constructed. Pointless structures it has to be said, but theyre too big and have been there too long to not be curious.

In reply to Jamming Dodger:

That's funny.

sorry wonko for laughing a little but then it's ok cos no doubt I'm off on a flight of fancy once more.

In reply to Tall Clare:


The slagging off of Fraser and the Golden Bough is valid though, it is the most fvcking patronising book ever written.

In reply to johnj: I'm agog! What do you think happened to Napoleon in the pyramid?

In reply to Jamming Dodger:
Sorry, yes, misidentified the poster

In reply to Jamming Dodger: Just reminded me - so am I! Best change my profile...

In reply to Postmanpat: <tut>

In reply to mrchewy: You forgetful old fart. That'll be the dementia kicking in.

In reply to Sir Chasm:

I dunno maybe he met Ra!?

In reply to Tall Clare: How about a 250 reply thread summary post?

In reply to JimboWizbo: Ok. God doesnt exist. There. I said it.
Solar eclipses are pretty cool though.

In reply to JimboWizbo: Johnj is busy trolling that the Egyptians built pyramids on the moon.

In reply to Postmanpat: No, she's English. Pretty, very intelligent. Gets irony and has a good sense of humour when she's not scowling or making unreasonable demands.

She just has not the first clue how not to be a complete pain in the arse.

In reply to Sir Chasm:

Come on it's not the moon there was stuff laying about up there way before the Egyptians got there, the Egyptians built Pyramids on Mars, I though everyone knew this basic stuff.

In reply to Tall Clare: The insides of the pyramids were probably modelled to scale.

The pyramids were infilled with crushed rock, much like 6F2 or Type 1 DOT, compacted.

When they reached formation level, they probably laid some rocks down as a foundation, filled up to this level, built the room as per the scale model and backfilled the outside as they went for stability and to facilitate loading the blocks for the next level.

Hardly difficult. Just labour intensive.

We still use the same techniques with formwork and retaining walls.

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

it almost sounds like a cartoon version of what wiki says

History and description

It is believed the pyramid was built as a tomb for fourth dynasty Egyptian pharaoh Khufu and was constructed over a 20 year period. Khufu's vizier, Hemon, or Hemiunu, is believed by some to be the architect of the Great Pyramid.[2] It is thought that, at construction, the Great Pyramid was originally 280 Egyptian cubits tall, 146.5 metres (480.6 ft) but with erosion and absence of its pyramidion, its present height is 138.8 metres (455.4 ft). Each base side was 440 cubits, 230.4 metres (755.9 ft) long. The mass of the pyramid is estimated at 5.9 million tonnes. The volume, including an internal hillock, is roughly 2,500,000 cubic metres.[3] Based on these estimates, building this in 20 years would involve installing approximately 800 tonnes of stone every day. Similarly, since it consists of an estimated 2.3 million blocks, completing the building in 20 years would involve moving an average of more than 12 of the blocks into place each hour, day and night. The first precision measurements of the pyramid were made by Egyptologist Sir Flinders Petrie in 1880–82 and published as The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh.[4] Almost all reports are based on his measurements. Many of the casing stones and inner chamber blocks of the Great Pyramid were fit together with extremely high precision. Based on measurements taken on the north eastern casing stones, the mean opening of the joints is only 0.5 millimetres wide (1/50th of an inch).[5]



The pyramid remained the tallest man-made structure in the world for over 3,800 years,[6] unsurpassed until the 160-metre-tall spire of Lincoln Cathedral was completed c. 1300. The accuracy of the pyramid's workmanship is such that the four sides of the base have an average error of only 58 millimetres in length.[7] The base is horizontal and flat to within ±15 mm.[8] The sides of the square base are closely aligned to the four cardinal compass points (within 4 minutes of arc)[9] based on true north, not magnetic north,[10] and the finished base was squared to a mean corner error of only 12 seconds of arc.[11] The completed design dimensions, as suggested by Petrie's survey and subsequent studies, are estimated to have originally been 280 cubits high by 440 cubits long at each of the four sides of its base. The ratio of the perimeter to height of 1760/280 cubits equates to 2Pi to an accuracy of better than 0.05% (corresponding to the well-known approximation of Pi as 22/7). Some Egyptologists consider this to have been the result of deliberate design proportion. Verner wrote, "We can conclude that although the ancient Egyptians could not precisely define the value of Pi, in practice they used it".[12] Petrie, author of Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh concluded: "but these relations of areas and of circular ratio are so systematic that we should grant that they were in the builder's design".[13] Others have argued that the Ancient Egyptians had no concept of pi and would not have thought to encode it in their monuments. They believe that the observed pyramid slope may be based on a simple seked slope choice alone, with no regard to the overall size and proportions of the finished building.[14]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza

In reply to Tall Clare: And John, No idea what you're on. You're about the only engineer I've heard of who gives credence to this trollop. My guess is you're either 0% engineer, or 100% troll.

In reply to johnj: Well there you go.

It just goes to show that Henry Ford was probably not the first person to use mass production techniques with specialists at each stage.

In reply to johnj:




OR, it may have been based on the fact that they f*cked a few up before they got it right, learned from their experience, and just like the golden ratio in architecture, which was discovered before the maths was discovered, it turns out to be the most cost effective shape for a pyramid if you would like it not to fall over.

Just saying, like.

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

Here you go then a little more light reading

http://www.gizapower.com/Advanced/Advanced%20Machining.html

In reply to johnj: Can't see anything about the missing technology you've referred to.

In reply to johnj: I got bored at the bollocks about the lack of tools in the archeological record.


The reason for this is that the metals they did have were highly reactive ones, not to mention expensive. You'd not expect to find copper, rope or timber tools.

Note that very little granite was used. For the most part, it's soft stone. Easy to work.

In reply to Tall Clare: I LOVE the bit where he dismisses lasers as a cutting tool because they are not a good cutting tool for rock.

Leaving out that to PRODUCE lasers, you'd need a manufacturing base which you'd not be able to hide.

But they probably had a small, neat, magic laser making machine. Doh.

In reply to Sir Chasm:

No me neither just post industrial revolution type of tech really, the high tech stuff no doubt was on the secret moon base by then, maybe the Nazis had developed time travel and erased it from the record then used it to build their secret bases on Saturn?

In reply to Wonko The Sane: ok as you're the brains round here knock up a little pyramid in you garden tonight and you can show everyone how easy it is to carve soft stone, maybe you could use some grit thats pretty soft innit.. lol

In reply to johnj: From my favourite play in the world. ever.

“THOMASINA: ....the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue. Oh, Septimus! -- can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides -- thousands of poems -- Aristotle's own library!....How can we sleep for grief?

SEPTIMUS: By counting our stock. Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripides, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?”






Have you any reason to think the technology for a crude, man operated lathe could not have been discovered, used and lost

In reply to johnj: As I said. Pay me and i'll build you a real one.

In reply to johnj:

Troll (or nutter)

In reply to johnj:

I spent about 20 minutes alone in the King's burial chamber of the Great Pyramid*. I can assure you that, although a pretty cool experience, nothing untoward happened (apart from a booming voice saying "one day you WILL onsight E6", but I get that all the time anyway, so nothing unusual there. Napolen was undoubtedly spouting bollocks and so are you.

*Hint: arrive early and buy one of the limited number of tickets, then wait until late in the day when everyone else has already been in.

In reply to Red Rover:

come on name calling was so this afternoon you need a bit more game than that this evening, where's yer imagination.

In reply to Gordon Stainforth:

But if the chances are one in 120 thousand billion billion then its odds on we are alone!

In reply to Robert Durran:

I never got to the Kings chamber just spent some time getting hassled by the Arabs wondering what all the fuss was over the big piles of choss.

In reply to Robert Durran: Go look up the Drake equation.

In reply to johnj:

Mexico has some much finer pyramids. Particularly Palenque

In reply to Tall Clare: Though for sheer scale, you can't beat Monte Alban.

also home to a game which I think should be reintroduced, along with the 'prize'

In reply to Tall Clare: It was a good eclipse. We're were due to see 64% of the it in Canberra at 8.04 am, but ten minutes before that time we had total cloud cover, so we thought we'd see sod all. We got lucky though and saw it!! The cloud thinned just enough, as I was driving my missus into work, for us to see the partial eclipse. Not only that, but due to the thin cloud we were able to look directly at it, it was a breathtaking sight!

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

Yes, there are a lot of unknowns it it which was exactly my point.

In reply to Robert Durran:

True.

But when I wake up in the morning, shit, shower and shave........ I don't feel very 'special', do you?

I would guess (and it is simply a guess) that the chances are a little better that there is/was some life, somewhere.

In reply to Wonko The Sane: I guess that there isn't/wasn't. And I bet I won't be proved wrong.

In reply to Sir Chasm: I REALLY hope aliens land tomorrow

In reply to Sir Chasm:

I wouldn't wager either way, i'll keep an open mind and as they say hedge my bets.

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

Actually, I do feel pretty special (though no more special than anyone else - well maybe just a little bit...)


A guess is all it can be on the current evidence. Rather than profess any belief on the subject, I prefer to remain properly open minded.

In reply to Robert Durran:

Hence the word 'guess'

A guess doesn't imply a closed mind. It implies a guess.

In reply to Tall Clare:

And before you ask, I 'guess' that way because the geolicical processes which formed our earth are not magical and can have happened many times over.

Life forming?
I don't see that as magical either.

Given the very long periods of time it's thought to have happened over....... whilst I am not stating it HAS happened anywhere else, I can see no reason why not.

In reply to johnj:

You are by far the most interesting person on this forum. You are as funny as f£ck. Consider me a fan.

In reply to Sebastian Fontleroy:

Hello Sebasitian, thanks for the kind words :+) No doubt there'll be a bit of incoming today or tommorow or until the usual suspects get bored. On the other hand they could always ignore my musings and swiftly progress along to the next topic, nothing to see here move on ya'll.

How come up until around 2000 years ago, gods used to show off and do things like appear as a horse and shag all the women in a village or make fire come out of things. Now suddenly we're to believe that they reduced themselves to carefully aligning stellar objects.

It's as unlikely as my wife doing the washing, drying and ironing then putting it away in my cupboard and leaving me to guess. Instead it is scattered around the lounge in piles and on hanger so it's bloody obvious of her omnipotent control of the laundry cycle.

In reply to Talius Brute:

Eh? How so? I agree it is mostly a made up mishmash of various mythologies cobbled together to create a pseudo-druidical religion that full filled the fantasies of the Victorian Celtic revival lot and anyone one with sense would skip to the back to learn that the answer was mistletoe. But patronising? I don't really see it.

In reply to Philip:

I think thats an excellent point. What have the Gods done in recent times that is worthy of a mention in a book about 1500 pages long containing spurious heresay? Something that you wouldnt find in any edition of The Sun (a la "my wife turned into a cabbage overnight" (dont we all))


Theres a solution for that controlling behaviour, you know...

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

"Non-magical" is not the same as "likely" (If I bought a lottery ticket, I might win the jackpot - not magical but very unlikely).

I would no more presume to guess whether or not life has emerged elsewhere in the universe than I would presume to guess the outcome of tossing a coin.

In reply to Robert Durran:

You miss the point.

Nor would I guess at the toss of a single coin.

But over the course of a few hundred millions of years, it's quite probable that you're not geussing at the outcome of a single coin toss.
You're guessing at billions of coin tosses.


That's WHY many scientists, far more informed than me, beleive life not only could form if conditions prevailed.......... but in all probability, would form.

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

No, your missing the point.....

......each with an unknown, but possibly ridiculously low chance of coming up heads. Same difference.

If....

In reply to Robert Durran:


And yet, I've read a fair amount from people who, as I've said have a far superior knowledge to me, and I suspect you too........ who think this may well be the case.

Nowhere have I suggested it's proven.

And a small point, most scientific hypothesis start with a guess, which they go on to prove or disprove.

If we all had your aversion to making any kind of guess, we'd know nothing at all.

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

I take your point.
But supposing we have no clear evidence either way, it is still interesting to try to answer the question "are we alone" by looking for extra terrestrial life. I don't see any need to guess an answer to make that a worthwhile thing to do.
On the other hand, spending billions building the LHC might have been considered folly if theory hadn't strongly suggested what to look for (eg Higgs, Supersymmetry) and how to look for it - so here an educated guess is probably a good idea.

In reply to Wonko The Sane:


Why can't you guess that we were created by another life form, on the basis that humans now create other life forms, could have the engineering skills to travel to distant solar systems and carryout huge engineering projects in the not so distant future (if we don't destroy ourselves first). Engineering projects like adjusting the path of a satellite in order to create habitual living conditions, like we do now so we can watch football. Provide a reason as to why these mysterious life forms might not have left any evidence of their existence, and how photographs of the moons surface showing images that bear a resemblance to ancient human architectural sites on earth would prove there existence. Photographs that could be hidden from the public based on the fact that our government constantly lies to us (Iraq war, WTC 7 collapse).

I'm not going to pretend I understand any of this but have we not just invented a machine (Hadron Collider) that might teach us the process of how matter is formed? How long did it take us to go from discovering the atom to splitting it?

Yet the response I get is that I'm bonkers or a troll. Is it just a flight of fancy to far? Is there some blindingly obvious scientific reason that what I'm suggesting could not happen, that's so blindingly obvious no one's pointed it out to me? Not winging or having a go, just generally don't see why people find the idea so crazy.

In reply to Horatio:

You were doing well until here - the lies about WTC-7 were spread by the conspiracy theorists rather than the government.

ALC

In reply to Horatio:

A scientist doesn't usually guess for no reason at all. It's usually because of some indicator. They THEN go on to try to prove or disprove the theory.

There is no reason to postulate a god. No evidence for it other than early writings, and few of those historical writings. Also, there is much evidence to show that humans try to answer the unknown and given the lack of tools the ancients had, it's hardly surprising that superstition featured heavily.
I'd look up cargo cults.




I'm not sure what you're asking here. Though technological advance is not linear in our society.


No reason why it CAN'T be right. But no more than any other fanciful idea.
And even if I shared your view that there was a god....... it would answer precisely nothing for me.

Because if your take is that the universe cannot simply have come into being by itself, but an all powerful creator CAN.......... you lack curiosity.
I see no difference between a god suddenly turning up, or having existed forever than saying the same of the universe.


all in all, there IS evidence to show that humans make stuff up, and no valid reason to suggest the origin of everything is 'god'

It appears to me something we just made up to explain forces we could not understand.

In reply to Robert Durran:

I completely agree. Though I'd say that in the case of the formation of life..... which is not really understood, questions were asked, 'what if' etc, and from that, people have fallen into different camps based on which unknowns they have focused on. So the evidence is there...... just very inconclusive.

In reply to Wonko The Sane: I've never once mentioned God. Nor did the article. All I, and the article is suggesting is that it was designed, and I'm suggesting it was designed by intelligent lifeforms.

In reply to a lakeland climber:


I thought the lie was outed by the British Broadcasting Corporation who broadcast it had fallen down for all the world to see when the reporter was stood right in front of it, it then fell down a short while later.

In reply to a lakeland climber: What are the lies about WTC 7?

In reply to Horatio:

Why.
There is no reason to think so and every reason not to.

In reply to johnj:

Agggghhhhh, please, no!!!

There should be an alternative to Godwin's law (to be know as the "WTC7 law")which would state that:

"Sooner or later any intellectually lazy conspiracy theorist will bring up the subject of WTC7 and think it proves something. He/she has therefore lost both the plot and the argument"

In reply to Postmanpat:

Back to name calling, how quaint.

In reply to Philip:
How come up until around 2000 years ago, gods used to show off and do things like appear as a horse(1) and shag all the women in a village or make fire come out of things(2). Now suddenly we're to believe that they reduced themselves to carefully aligning stellar objects.(3)

(1) Does Mr. Hands count?

(2) I can see the HSE taking a very dim view of this sort of thing.

(3) Maybe modern profits (sic) of God are more self serving and take credit for stuff themselves: "And lo the profit came down from Mount Sinai bearing the commandments on a tablet of brushed aluminium alloy and a plasticy substance and the people were greatly a'feared. They did flock unto the stores named after the forbidden fruit and purchase replicas of the tablet while uttering the name of the profit. I mean "Jobs" is a dead bible giveaway innit!

In reply to Horatio: You're cobbling together bits of popular science misunderstood from lurid newspaper articles together with out and out fantasy.

If you don't understand that 'travelling to distant solar systems' is rather more than an engineering problem, or that GM is rather less than 'creating other life forms' in any meaningful sense, then you perhaps need to do a bit more reading.

Which isn't to say that technology hasn't progressed incredibly in the last 200 years; but it is highly likely that the pace of genuine, game changing advances is likely to plummet. (In fact, it already has. Cars are recognisably the same basic design as they were 100 years ago; we're still about as far away from speech recognition, artifical intelligence and the like as we were 20 years ago.)

In reply to Wonko The Sane: Why, there is absolutely no way to prove it one way or the other at the moment. I'm suggesting an extension of Darwinism where by life not only moves around the planet but also moves around the universe in various forms (such as bacteria or spacemen), colonising habitual planets when it can and evolving into whatever it evolves into. I'm proposing that life started with the big bang and is as much the fabric of our universe as matter. And you're suggesting that given the right conditions, life will randomly spawn. Why is one so believable and the other so insane?

In reply to johnj:

Nah, just casual observation. As others have pointed out, your reluctance or inability to back up your ideas with any reasoned evidence doesn't really
make it worthwhile others engaging seriously with them.

Maybe if you treated others seriously they would reciprocate?

In reply to Horatio:

That it was demolished by controlled explosions and that there was no damage to the building prior to its collapse.

7 WTC was damaged by debris when the nearby North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. The debris also ignited fires, which continued to burn throughout the afternoon on lower floors of the building. The building's internal fire suppression system lacked water pressure to fight the fires, and the building collapsed completely at 5:21:10 pm.[2] The collapse began when a critical internal column buckled and triggered structural failure throughout, which was first visible from the exterior with the crumbling of a rooftop penthouse structure at 5:20:33 pm (From Wikipedia)

As for the BBC report - I'm not sure what local time it was broadcast but given the confusing situation at the time and lots of conflicting reports it's hardly surprising that someone who wasn't familiar with the outlines of other parts of WTC might repeat or conflate things that later turn out to be wrong. If you were about to go on air and among the things that you are being told are "WTC-7 is on fire" (true) and "A building has collapsed" (assume this is true for the moment) then these will stick in your mind and could easily become "WTC-7 has collapsed". I'm not say that is what happened but it is a plausible theory.

Anyway, little green aliens teleported in to the planes and did it, teleporting out again just before impact.

ALC

In reply to Postmanpat: So why did WTC 7 collapse?

In reply to Postmanpat:


Double prize if "freefall speed" is mentioned.
Speaking of prizes I think Tall Clare wins this years troll thread prize.

In reply to Horatio:

There was a big fire. Also it had been structurally altered in a way that made it rather susceptible to collapse when a particular column was heated.

In reply to Horatio: Ok. Last try. Read this.


Russell's original proposition

In an unpublished article entitled "Is There a God?" commissioned in 1952 by Illustrated magazine,[1] Russell suggested the following thought experiment to illustrate the burden of proof and falsifiability:




“”If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes.
But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.
If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

The existence of this teapot cannot be disproved. We can look and scan the skies almost for eternity, and it may always just be the case that it wasn't in the place we looked - there may be another spot we've overlooked. However, given the absurd nature of the specific example, the teapot, we would rightly infer that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Russell's audacity in the thought experiment was to question why people don't like to apply the same, sound, logic to the existence of any particular deity; there is no difference in the evidence base provided, therefore there is no reason to assume a God and not a celestial teapot.

In reply to a lakeland climber:

Update -

BBC News reported the collapse of 7 WTC twenty minutes before it actually fell. The BBC has stated that many news sources were reporting the imminent collapse of 7 WTC on the day of the attacks.[68] Jane Standley, the reporter who announced the collapse prematurely, called it a "very small and very honest mistake" caused by her thinking on her feet after being confronted with a report she had no way of checking.



ALC

In reply to Horatio:

Read (and preferably understand) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WTC-7

ALC

In reply to Horatio:

http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm ??

In reply to Postmanpat:

you haven't read the thread then and paid close attention to the links and references then, just repeated what others have said, very poor troll

0000000000000000000000000000000.1/10

In reply to Horatio:


It's very easy to come up with flight-of-fancy ideas (for example, you could be an alien from the Planet Zog, sent here to do your undergraduate sociology project by observing humans). But, it's "bonkers" to pursue ideas that are only flights-of-fancy and have no evidence at all for them. People are calling you bonkers because you aren't abiding by the basic principle that ideas are only worth discussing and considering on the basis of the evidence for them.

In reply to Postmanpat:

I read that link pretty much word for word about 5 years ago, I've just had a quick skim and they've plugged a few of the holes with a bit more noise and images, I'll have a good read again as soon as possible, it's just such a creaky plot that Hollywood wouldn't dare touch it