At some point it becomes illogical to ask "what caused it" or "what comes before". Both these questions postulate the prior existence of time. If time itself came into being, then asking "what caused this" or "what happened before this" is meaningless since both questions imply a time based causation which could not have happened in the absence of time itself.

Hoist by his own petard :p

The nature of god? I thought you were only talking about the Christian god...

Zeus has very different rules I can tell you!

It's comforting because it means you're important. If there is a god who cares enough (either way) to send you to hell if you're bad and reward you if you're good, then you're not someone insignificant...you're a person worthy of god's attention. Otherwise god would just say "yeah, whatever...hell, heaven...I don't give a shit!" Feeds beautifully into our innate narcissism. If you go to hell, you're a badass gangsta worthy of the company of Lucifer himself.

It bring out the inner masochist in us. We gain pleasure from being crapped on and punished. Because even that way we're not being ignored.

Unlikely. Most probably people are more and more depressed over the random nature the world and all the crap that can happen to them. Since astrology provides a nice safe structure to explain shit, it must be very comforting to believe in something...anything! Probably explains why people are still religious.

It doesn't matter if it doesn't matter. It's interesting and that's all that matters!

What I'm not sure of, is which theory exactly predicts that the universe should have a lot more matter? I know that one does, I'm just not sure if it's GR that makes the prediction. Any links containing more info as to which theory makes these predictions?

To the best of my knowledge, WIMPS are postulated to exist due to some prediction of the current model of particle physics. I doubt if GR predicts WIMPS. Of course, I could be wrong and would welcome any corrections.

Lol. Internet hero giving his completely random opinion on relativity. How about some peer reviewed documentation? Even some simple equations would do. Please...point out the exact step in the equations that you think is wrong. Then we'll talk.

Am I the only one terrified that if something happens to my one "dedicated device", I'm screwed? The reason I keep my encrypted passwords in the cloud is that the service provides have redundancy. I'm seriously fucked if I lose access to my data store. How could anyone possibly sleep in peace knowing that their entire lives revolve around the safekeeping of one fallible hardware device??

And yet some people I've spoken to would rather trust AT&T than a company like Google when it comes to their choice of Internet Service Provider. I'm always amused by these guys.

"Google is evil! How can you even think of taking Internet service from them? AT&T? Oh sure! Sign me up!"

Apparently they believe that just because Google is an ad company they'll sell your personal information for cash. Well, no they won't because that's not how it works and they'd be pretty stupid to do that since their entire business model is based on trust. And second...well apparently AT&T is straight up selling data for money. Surprise surprise!

Good for you. I happily and willingly give my private information to Google and benefit from their free services. I win. They win. Everyone wins. What's not to like about this?

Yes, I would feel better because you have a choice not to use Facebook.

How did net neutrality get dragged into this?

Yes. You are being rude by pretending to listen to the person about football. If you're not interested, break it off and go elsewhere. If you can't easily break it off, then checking your messages from your boss is just a cop out.