IIRC it was a pope who said that the bible should be used as a guide for getting into heaven, not as a guide to find out how the heaven works (in reply to the question whether the whole Big Bang thing could be real).

Can you show an example where continued and repeated observations were ignored to "preserve" a theory?

If you have a model that explains our observation better, we're happy to hear it.

A working theory is just that. A theory. It's what people came up with based on what they can observe (the funny part is that the same is actually true for all the religious texts that explain how the world came to be. Man observed his universe and, lacking any other kind of explanation, invented some Gods that explain his observation. Sadly, these theories were not improved over time but enshrined as "holy texts").

New observations will be made over time. At least I'd hope so. These observations now either fit into the theory (now that would be great) or they don't. If they don't, it's time to fiddle with the theory. Dark matter and dark energy are indeed a bit of a puzzle since we can observe their gravitational effect, but it doesn't interact with the rest of the universe in any other way. It's just "there". There are actually quite a few ideas what could be behind it, but for a theory they pretty much all lack the "angle" to test them.

That's ok and fine. I'm a very liberal kind of person, and hence everyone has the right to believe whatever they want to believe. God on a fluffy cloud, Zombie Jesus and the egg hiding bunny, fat smiling guy who teaches about having no wanting in your life is the road to ascension, hell, even the gobbelygoo about some alien body snatchers that came here on intergalactic spaceplanes and got dumped into volcanoes. Whatever floats your boat, if you feel better with that whole gunk, have fun!

Just keep it out of schools, science and laws. Don't mix fiction with reality.

I stopped listening when one of them wanted to argue that the King James book was God's word.

God's word? That book is a translation of a (very bad, I may add) translation of a translation of a translation. And possibly you have to add another "of a translation" in there, the jury's still out on that one.

That's like a homeopathic dose of God's word.

Unless you got a better theory, I guess there's little alternative.

And no, "a wizard did it" is NOT a theory!

I'm just wondering, do people distrust science, or do they distrust corporations? I trust science that it is capable of producing vaccines that are perfectly safe (well, as safe as a medical treatment can become, there's always a minimal risk involved, but in general the gain outweighs the risk by some margin). I don't trust corporations to not cut corners and endanger lives if they can get away with it while making a buck.

I'm kinda glad I am NOT living in your country. Laws here specifically state that he must not.

I still change the lock as one of the first actions when I move into a new apartment.

That article has more holes than my old socks, and it even smells way worse.

Determining "rich" and "poor" by education is, well, rich. One could also say that the workload on college educated people went through the roof, while low skilled labour was laid off (which is one of the reasons why college boy gets to work overtime since he now has to write his own letters, clean his own desk and empty his own basket).

Of course that results in way more leisure time for the uneducated. Hey, if you have no job, you have 24 hours of leisure time a day, beat that when you're employed!

That's why I love my rooms pointing towards the west, it makes getting up with the first ray of sunlight so much easier.

Or, just so you understand, just because YOU didn't hear about it doesn't mean it didn't exist and others (like, say ME) didn't know about it. The difference is, with closed source, an NDA can efficiently keep me from telling you earlier.

I sometimes wonder whether some people actively try to nitpick about details that don't matter at all...

Since when do we give a shit about whether zombies are right?

But let's play along. From a forensic point of view he would be wrong. No part of the axe you hold in your hands has been involved in the beheading of the person.

Then it's their choice to add a service to the router and state in the contract that I must not disable it.

Or do you consider it normal that your landlord should retain a key to the apartment you rent so he can come in at leisure to check out that everything's in order? Of course just to aid you.

What keeps you (or the golf course owners) from defining "beginner" starting points differently from "expert" course start? After all, sooner or later you will move towards the goal, have beginners start around halfway towards the hole and you have what you want.

And if it's not in some kind of competitive setting, what keeps you from giving the "rules" the finger and simply starting halfway down the field? And with new courses this could be taken into account, with the hard parts and insidious bends and water pits and whatnot in the first half of the course that's reserved for the "experts".

All I want is less tax on wages and higher tax on capital gains. I know it's an outlandish idea, but I think that WORKING should actually be rewarded, not having others work for you.