that's a fiction, you are no more interpreting your files than the police are. it's encrypted and decrypted by an algorithm that requires a specific key... the person interpreting for you and for them was whoever designed the software. if you want to use the "interpreting" argument, you'd have to write your own encryption software.

your analogy really sucks you know. if you lose all sensing instruments on a sub, you can always ascend relatively safely... and a lot of their sensing instruments aren't even visual.

your point "again" is being made for the first time you fuck. Your emphasis was non-existent.

controlled descent in a plane is a lot different than controlled ascent in a sub. the ground is a lot more fatal than the air.

i didn't assume you were a christian, but that's the one i'm most familiar with and i used the collective "you". I would not classify religions without divinity religions at all. But regardless, all religions/spirituality claim special knowledge of the truth of nature. and the majority claim authority in their views from putative records of the suspension of physical laws.

Lets go new-age with this, if you say science doesn't have all the answers, i'd wholeheartedly agree with you. If you go further to say that because science doesn't have all the answers it means that some of your answers are correct, i'd have to call BS. We know what causes many diseases, we have good ideas of what causes the rest. We know where we've come from, we know where your personality lives. The part of my "soul" that controls my volition, my speech, my happiness and my sadness reside in that 3 lb mass of computation in my head.

believing the laws of physics are simply the suggestions does not jive with the world we live in today, that's why i don't respect their position. If people disbelieve that much in the laws of physics to think that there was the possibility of them being broken in the past, then they should really stop using things.... all things.

that's an incredibly disturbing thought. thanks for that. not only can they throw beefed up protons at us, they're getting closer.

this comment deserves recognition. please mod parent up :)

fuck off kid.

someone saw something moving at nearly the speed of light packing the energy of a fast moving baseball at 20 odd something orders of magnitude it's mass... and you don't think OMG is an appropriate declaration?

Dinesh D’Souza has always been a hack. it'd be different if it were a good writer, but i might as well be outraged at them pulling twilight from their shelves. some things really aren't worth the ink they're printed with :)

as far as i can tell, loss of vision isn't really one of those fatal scenarios for the water tubes though, as much as for the air tubes. gravity is a lot less forgiving when the only way to counteract it is to go at tube blowing-up speeds.

If we were talking about lack of vision in a floaty heated gas sphere, it'd be a different story.

for most people in NY now.

i'm not talking about every word of every page. i'm talking the big stuff... the miracles. stopping the sun, resurrection, things that just don't jive with our understanding of the way the universe operates. If you don't believe that miracles happened, and the bible is a somewhat accurate (simply using bible as a placeholder) description of what took place... where the hell does divinity come into the equation?

how the hell do you know the god you worship except by what others have told you and the texts? you trace the knowledge, and it comes back to people believing what they believe because they read, heard or witnessed miracles. And a carpenter had some nice things to say about morality. If Jesus isn't divine, is it religion or a lifestyle choice?

As they say, even if there's a god, it doesn't mean you know what the fuck he's all about.

do you even know what would happen if the earth stood still for a day? I don't, but i imagine it involves massive tidal waves and every civilization on earth collectively shitting itself.

i don't like religious extremists for obvious reasons. I don't like religious moderates on the one hand because they work to allow for the growth of religious extremism, and on the other hand because they are intellectually bankrupt. At least the fundamentalists stick to one view of the universe. It might be wrong, but they have no cognitive dissonance.

either the religious text is the word of god or it isn't. saying it's allegory means that you're waving away the miracles as something other than actual. which undermines the authority of the work.

I may like the little old lady down the street. but i have absolutely no respect for her position.

Jeebus either walked on water or he didn't, he either rose from the dead or he didn't. physics either governs our reality or it doesn't. you can't have both. and if he isn't the son of god, literally and actually, then his moral authority is bankrupt. Tell me you think it's good morality that you're cherrypicking from the bible, but don't tell me it's truth.

yeah, but at least they're shooting in the general direction.

faith healing is like trying to throw a hail mary... in golf.

all contracts will require both parties to give something up that they don't necessarily want to give up.

in this case, the employer gives up money for the employee giving up time. calling the price of a transaction "duress" is moronic. i'm not calling you stupid for disagreeing with me, i'm calling you stupid for trying to make a stupid point.

that's stupid, and you're stupid for saying it. you've broadened the scope of "duress" to be meaningless.

ha, shows how much you know, bigfoots don't die.