There is probably a reason that plants (or more specifically, their ancestor) gave up asexual reproduction a long time ago. From memory, the currently accepted reason was that it allowed for more variety in the gene pool and therefore could allow for more agile adaptation to changing environmental factors that are impacting an organism's survival.

For plants that we're trying to domesticate (see: Artificial Selection), faster evolution is probably better.

Easy, use direct messages, you can only direct message people who are following you, so just make @my_house follow you and the others who you want to have access.

I think the order would be more like:

1. Sell to customers who blindly trust in it.
4. PROFIT!!!
3. ???
2. Fail to detect anything on many an occasion because it most likely isn't perfect.

I'm pretty sure GP is talking about (radiative) wireless transmission...

How can the movie companies afford to continue to make them?

No no, Geology rocks, Biotech grows on you

And if the inhabitants are nothing like humans but have a dominant religion claiming that they were "created in god's image"?

Or does that just mean that their religion is wrong (like all the other ones on Earth)?

Yep and if you do an even more elaborate experiment, where you put detectors at each slit, but then wire the detectors up to the same output (ie, the electron is detected, but you don't know which one detected it), the wave function doesn't collapse until it hits the screen!

Actually, you did:

Of course. If you take a thousands of years old, massively inconsistent and largely edited book to be a 100% true version of events, then so be it. For the majority of the scientific world, you'll find that it takes a lot more.

Of course they are, not only is there no evidence for anything existing outside of the observable natural world, is it the consistency of the universe that allows us to survive. This comes back to why planes stay in the air. If the universe's laws for physics were variable, we'd have no way of building planes. Today they work, tomorrow airfoils have to be reversed to match the changing rules. Today the petrol in your car is just flammable enough to run the engine, tomorrow your engine explodes and the day after, petrol is as reactive as water.

This question assumes that a god exists. Since there is no evidence for a god, why would I believe in one?
If there was evidence for a god, I'd believe. If god was performing miracles left right and center now (like the bible says he was thousands of years ago), I'd be more inclined to believe. This isn't a "god exists and people don't believe in him" game, this is a "god may or may not exist, and the only evidence for his existence is the bible" game.

With no god, this point is moot, but perhaps we could look to other religions for your answer? Muslims need to uphold the 5 pillars, 4 of which are physical actions. In the case of Islam, faith alone is not enough to garner "acceptance" or "rejection".

There are things that are out of man's control (such as meteorites, for now), but other than natural events, there is no reason to believe that man's "destiny" is controlled or even influenced by external factors. With this being the case, why would anyone trust in a source that says that man's "destiny" is controlled by supernatural factors? The reason is that they were raised to believe so, or were convinced by someone.

Who's we? How do I know YOU experience green the same as I do? Computers today are not advanced enough, but this article discussed advanced, conscious Artificial Intelligence. There is no evidence for a soul, and no reason that the physical events inside the human brain can not account for qualia and consciousness. If the brain is just electrical and chemical reactions on a hugely complex scale, why can't we simulate that in silicon or some other medium?

These two statements are contradictory. If you assert that the soul is separate from the body, you assert that the "soul" exists, making you a believer in the supernatural. There isn't anything wrong with you being a believer, but as stated by GP:

Asserting that souls exist and then claiming that the existence of souls is unknown are not compatible.

I'm pretty sure they could easily offset the "camera" by 2-3cm to the left, render the movie, offset to the right, rerender and there you are! This is why the new Pixar movies in "actual 3D" are such a rip, they didn't actually do any more work, it just took twice as long to render because they used an additional viewpoint.

Also, "depthiness" is an awesome word

My kingdom for mod points!

Unofficial +1 Insightful from me

Ok, you have clearly failed to fully read my post.

In addition to the fact that you didn't try to back up your claim that Jesus was the only one who claimed to be resurrected, you also missed the next important part:

If you discount the Christian bible, the first two paragraphs of your response are meaningless.

None of these assertions have any evidence for them. They are all anecdotal evidence from a book that has been translated and manipulated over centuries.

This is true, but usually when we have more than one record, we take these records to be a little more credible (as long as they agree with each other). Even if we completely ignore the internal inconsistency of the bible, there are no third-party sources that could not have been influenced by the bible. For example, if god had stopped the Sun in the sky for three days, don't you think the Aztecs and American Indians would have recorded an unusually long night (and the Chinese an unusually long twilight, and possibly the Icelanders/Greenlanders a long morning)?
The bible is NOT EVIDENCE.

This is a total non-sequitur. Of course we live putting our trust in others. But religious faith is not the same as trusting that your cereal is not infected with salmonella. The main reason for this is that companies that provide us with these goods exist today. I can actually go and visit their factories and find out what food handling procedures they have in place. No one can actually visit god, or the people who wrote the bible and thus no trust should be put in them. I know the science behind why planes fly and it is not faith that keeps them up there.

Well, you believe whatever you want to believe. But when you come into a discussion saying that meteorites are myths and that we as a species have nothing to fear from them because humans won't go extinct "at least not before the second coming of Jesus Christ to this earth and then not either", you should expect to be modded down.

I'm pretty sure he was implying that the digital copies be printed, not that new digital copies be made by GGP.

My senses, and the senses of my (and the rest of humanity's) equipment. I'd believe your senses too if you can describe an objective way for me to repeat your experiences.

And where did you get these questions from? Why are these questions important? Personally, I think these questions are flawed, allow me to elaborate...

I came from my parents. They came from their parents, who came from their parents and so on. All the way back to the common ancestor between humans and all other animals, and even back further than that to the common ancestor of all life on earth. I don't know exactly how that particular organism came about, but I don't really see why it's important for me to know the specifics.*

Who else could I be than the person that I am while alive? This question implies that I could be something other than what I am now. This is absurd.

The purpose of my existence is to propagate the genes that made me. This is also the purpose of my ancestors and descendants.
Why should my life have a "greater" purpose than this? This question implies that everything (or at least humans) has a purpose, whereas our observations show that there isn't really any (deliberate) purpose in the (non-manmade) universe.

The electrical signals that keep your brain active will stop. Your consciousness will cease to exist and nothing will happen. Why does something have to happen? What did you experience before you were born? Before you were conceived and before your brain began to function, you experienced nothing, so why should death be any different?

I think you'll find that there have been many others. Why exactly do you think that Jesus is special in this regard?
Remember won't you that the deities listed in the article all had their backing in a book or mythology of some kind, this means that your bible is also not special.

Does this mean that I also worship my house, my computer, my girlfriend? I don't pray to science. I don't make offerings to science and I don't think any part of science is beyond being questioned. Other things that are worshiped are not treated the same by their worshipers. Hence, I still disagree with your statement about worshiping science.


*: The exception here (ie, the reason we would need to know this) is when determining the existence or probability of existence of life on other planets