I meant to post that the biblical scholar in question came to the conclusion that the EARTH and not the Bible was 6,000 years old, but you probably knew what I meant.

The Bible doesn't actually say how old the earth is; a Bible scholar from the Medieval Period working at the behest of the Church concluded the Bible was about 6,000 years old. He came to this conclusion based soley on the ages of the Bible patriarchs...which, as you have pointed out regardless of your being incorrect as to the age of the world and your statement that the Bible says the world is 3,000 years old, is pretty full of flaws. And, it shows the problems with looking for answers in just one book. Despite my pointing out where you statement is incorrect,I agree with your overall points.

Disprove? Maybe. Disprove to Bible literalists? Probably not. Most of us rational people would explain how the universe must have existed for at least hundreds of millions of years to explain how uranium and other heavy metals were created (they had to be created in supernovae; supernovae require at least hundreds of millions years for the stars to form, grow old, and die............. But, literalists would just say, "Uranium and other heavy metals are a gift from God."

Often, when secular people talk of "evil", they are referring to pathologies. An institution can do some pretty horrendous things. I think you are too consumed with semantics, here. When you see secular people using that terminology, just substitute "evil" for "pathologies". Also, "good" can be an economic term, as well, as in "the public good"; "goods and services".

But science does eliminate the need for a God. Science grants us a framework (incomplete as it may currently be) to understand the world around us devoid of God. Science, though it currently has holes, is an ongoing process. But, anyway you slice it, while science may not disprove God; it does prove we can come up with other explanations, which many ancient people could not, which is a large reason why they invented God in the first place. If people of faith acknowledge there can be other explanations for all the phenomena we see around us (and which is written in the Bible), and still choose to believe...I say more power to them. If they try and convert me, or "spread the Good news" to me...they obviously neither respect my views, nor accept that other explanations exist for it all. That becomes a problem for me! Science pre-dates the Church. As Europe fell into the "Dark Ages", the Church did preserve (and in limited cases) even expand scientific knowledge. I think of Mendel; the fact Newton was a devout member of the Anglican Church; Copernicus as part of the Catholic Church; the priest who came up with "The Big Bang" theory. But, the idea of understanding the world around you through observation and records is an element of science...and that goes back to the Greeks, even with their Gods. I do know people who, while otherwise logical, come to some unusual conclusions because of faith. And there are a lot of otherwise logical people who fail to see through the most basic arguments and observations because of faith. (I highlight some of those in a previous post.) Faith can be quite dangerous to our development and advancement as a species. You do bring up some interesting points,

But it also allows a culture/situation/etc. completely devoid of the most basic logic. Let me give you two examples: 1) A teacher tells the students there is no God. God cannot be measured in an objective manner, so he must not exist. (To me, that is a mistake, because, just as the existence of God is unprovable...so is the non-existence, but I digress.) The students say to the teacher, "We cannot see your brain and neither can you. How do you know it exists?" I am sure you all have heard this one before...it even made the rounds on Facebook. Now, to me, that point by the children is completely ludicrous...and laughable. I can't get an MRI of my brain? I can't get a PET scan? I can't have a tripaning? I can't have my brain preserved and then sent to the children? Can you take a verifiable image of God? What amazes me is not that children could be so simple-minded as not to see the illogic in that extremely silly argument; what amazes me is that adults I know, and who are in some ways smarter than I am, could not see through the silliness of those children's argument. They found it beautiful; true; profound. 2) A very elderly Catholic woman in my family once told me that the nuns told her all the water currently on the earth has always been here for as long as the earth has been here. Where this nun got this idea from, I have no clue. It doesn't even specifically say that in the Bible. Much less, any common sense will tell you that, if when asteroids and comets crash into the earth they bring water with them, there must be more water now than before. But this elderly woman just accepted what the nun said without question. This is the problem...these are what religious books like the Bible do to people. They don't TEACH people HOW to think; they TELL them WHAT to think...and they do so in a way where even the most basic idea in modern science (that, with today's technology, I can image or preserve my brain) gets forgotten by some otherwise pretty intelligent people. Science is always changing because knowledge is always changing. Science is like a "Choose Your Own Adventure" book with three outcomes (although you don't really get to choose because the facts are facts). The theory is proven incomplete and needs expansion. The theory is proven complete. The theory is proven completely incorrect and discarded. Religion leads to "cult of personality" where someone says something and it instantly becomes "true" merely because that person is an authority figure. "Truth" spread by authority figures, but never open to legitimate testing and verification is what religion is based on. I don't need any 2,000 year old book (most likely copied from another culture like the Mesopotamians and their "Epic of Gilgamesh" and not first thought of by the Israelites who rewrote the book to make themselves look better and more important than the rest of humanity at that time) to tell me I shouldn't kill; murder; steal; cause harm to other where I don't have to in order to survive; etc. I have a code of ethics based on the fact that every human has human DNA. I was not born entitled to any more, or less, than anybody else. From someone living on one dollar a day in some Third World hellhole, to someone who inherited tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from rich parents either in this country, or in an "Oil Monarchy". I will gladly take the priveleges my parents bestowed on me...but I am no more or less deserving than anyone else on the planet. I will therefore do no harm (whenever possible) because the people I would harm do not deserve such harm any more, or less, than I do. And I need no God to believe in to feel this way. If anyone else needs a God, or a 2,000 year old book (which has been rewritten to justify ethnic cleansing in some cases, Jericho), to believe in to not want to do no harm to others...it shows that humans are not nearly as evolved as we seem to think we are....................

Mr. Myhrvold: I know you are sold on traveling wave reactors, and I hope they prove their worth. But, I was wondering; have you given up on thorium-powered reactors? I saw an article in Forbes not too long ago where the author actually argued that, because it would turn thorium from an expensive-to-dispose-of-waste-product into a valuable resource, building thorium reactors could make electronics cheaper. This is because thorium is usually present in rare earth metals used for electronics and often have to be removed prior to processing. Have you considered running a similar kind of reactor to traveling wave on a thorium-uranium mixture (that would also deal with the problem of thorium being "fertile" as opposed to "fissile")? If thorium-powered reactors reduced the price of manufacturing electric vehicles, you would have the added benefit of cheaper EVs. This would not only reduce carbon emissions even further and faster; it would put more demand on the electricity grid as more people switched over to EVs from internal combustion powered cars. This would mean we would need even more electricity generation and less fossil fuels; we could build more of both the thorium reactors like LFTRs and traveling wave reactors to meet the demand. Finally, as everyone knows, thorium is far more common in the earth's crust than uranium. It seems to me using thorium-powered reactors to compliment your reactor concepts like traveling wave reactors would speed up the process you are trying to create, namely, the decarbonization of first the United States first, and then the world. I see no reason why both uranium and thorium reactors are not necessary. What are your thoughts? And is Intellectual Ventures pursuing R&D on thorium, as well?