philh

Siva Ganesha Your comparison that scientists have faith in evolution as the religious have faith in the bible is not valid. Evolution makes a number of testable predictions which could easily have falsified evolution and evolution has passed the test every time. Evolution is a big topic and I think you are right to say the issue that is of most concern is whether or not humans and chimps share a common ancestor. I would say there’s very little uncertainty as to whether this happened or not. We have many independent lines of quantifiable evidence that it did. Here’s a few predictions made and verified by the common ancestry hypothesis: Palaeontology: We will find a gradual change in fossil hominids so that the further back in time we look the less human like features we will find, we will also find less diversity in the hominid populations as we get earlier specimens. This is exactly what we do find. Chromosomal Studies: If humans and chimps share a common ancestor then we need an explanation for why chimps have one more set of chromosomes than humans. Evolution explains this by predicting a chromosome fusion site. This site was found on chromosome 2. Genetic Evidence: Pseudo genes are genes that are in the genotype but are no longer expressed in the phenotype. Evolution claims then that the distribution of pseudo genes should be predictable. Human and chimps should share the greatest number of pseudo genes, they do. I’ve just picked out three independent lines of evidence but there are many more. If you want to see a list of 29 independent lines of evidence for evolution try this: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ or a very good book detailing the testable quantifiable claims of human evolution is Relics of Eden by Daniel Faribanks http://www.amazon.com/Relics-Eden-Powerful-Evidence-Evolution/dp/1591025648 or try the evolution podcast: http://www.drzach.net/podcast.htm So I would say it doesn’t take any kind of faith to accept evolution and human evolution in particular. As to your 4% error claim. I don’t see how this is relevant, no one is suggesting there are never any errors in measurement. If we asked two people to measure the length of my desk they might not get the same answer but we wouldn’t doubt there was a desk. If we find the date of the human chimp split was 4% different than our current estimates, so what? That has no bearing on whether it happened or not, only when it happened. If the distance of to Vega was corrected by astronomers that gives me more confidence in science, not less. It tells me that its conclusion are always open to revision in the light of new evidence. That’s not something you so frequently see in religion. Also you Wall Street comparison is miss- leading. You have found an example where 4% is a lot, I can equally find an example where 4% is not a lot. (I’m a derivatives trader) Suppose I’m running 960 lots of Eurodollar future and my boss asks me what my position is, Ill say I’ve got 1,000 lots. No one in their right mind would care less that I was out by 4%. Just because in the example you thought of 4% was a significant number, does not mean it would be significant in all cases. Certainly in the case of human evolution if we got out dates wrong by 4% it would not change the conclusion that humans and chimps have a common ancestor.

If had the misfortune of having to sit through this paranoid delusion; "Zeitgeist The Movie". I would reccomend you save yourself 2 hours and stay away , but if that doesn't work out, there is a very good rebuttal site here: http://www.conspiracyscience.com/articles/zeitgeist/

Its neither proof nor supposition, but dates given by science on the age of the solar system and the development of life on this planet are backed by evidence. This contrasts strongly with the myhts presented in the bible or other religious texts.

Instinct does not require memory. Instict is according to wikipedia "the inherent disposition of a living organism toward a particular behavior. Instincts are unlearned, inherited fixed action patterns of responses or reactions to certain kinds of stimuli." For example you have an instinct to have sex becuase a mix of genetic mutations and natural selection has led to large number of nerve endings in your sexuals organs , so it becomes pleasurbale to have sex. You did not have to have any memory that you need to have sex. The two are not related. If you would like to understand how genes really work I would suggest a few books you could read: DNA by James Watson Genome by Matt Ridley Genetics by Leland Hartwell or why not simply go on Wikipedia and search "genetics"?

From our current understanding memory is most liekly stored in the brain (probably the hippocampus and amygdala ) and not written into the genes,therefore there is no plausibal mechanism for memory to be passed on between generations.

LOL

The article you quoted is just embarassingly awful social science. The articcle makes the point that R&D is not as important as most people think for "big pharma" .They quoted the number for one company Pfizer;what terrible piece of journalism this is. You need to look at the industry as a whole not just one firm. Furthermore in order to establish the R&D is a small % of revenue for the drugs companies you need to compare it to something else. The PFizer example gives us a figure of 15.71% R&D expendutre as a proprtion of revunue. Yet there is no comparison for other industries.Basically the journalist is misleading you to paint a picture that makes a dramatic story , the evils of big pharma. What bullshit. The real numnbers paint a very different picture, these are from the government Dept of Trade and Indsutry: http://www.abpi.org.uk/statistics/section.asp?sect=3 Paste this into your browser , you'll see in the Uk phama R&D as % of sales is far higher than in any other industry. In 2005 it was 33.3 % compared to the next highest highest sector aerospace which was 22.2% Furthermore this number has grown to 33.3 form 15.8% in 1991. Just like those that like to exxagerate the evils of big pharma like to practice psuedo sceince with the frequent touting of nonsense alternative medicine, it seems they are also practicing pseudo social science as well. A basic industrial economics text book might help. Im not doubting that theres probably some curruption in the industry, this is probably true in every large industry and its probably also true in governments too, but that does not justify the alarmist nonsense I so often hear about "big pharma".

my reply to Ghali: “You see that is all nice and well but we are talking about the totality of matter including the "side constraints" that allow this to happen. Causality in my eye is another way "sufficient reasons" if you wish so this model fails radically if we take it as an explaination of matter as a whole.” I’m not clear exactly what you are saying but I think you are misunderstanding my argument. I wasn’t referring to the totality of matter, what I was referring to was whether we need to look outside of our universe for at least one example of a break down of strict causality. Virtual particles cannot be written off as just an aberration of a model. They have real physical effects e.g. for example the Casimir Effect. Quantum mechanics does in deed give us the possibility of a break down of strict causality. Many physicists would certainly use much stronger language than “the possibility”. But no stronger statement is in fact required to defeat the Kalam argument. The reason is that it assumes everything in the universe has a cause and that the hypothesised un caused cause must therefore be outside the universe. If that assumption has even the possibility of being wrong then one cannot so easily procead from it and use it to make a case for god. The un caused cause could just as easily be within the universe and not a magic man outside of it. Indeed many cosmologists do theorise that matter does have its origin from a vacuum fluctuation. I’m sure you are familiar with papers by Edward Tyron, Alexander Vilenkin, Stephen Hawking and James Hartle who all take this view. If you want to rubbish these ideas you need provide some references to dismiss them as easily as you do. In fact you simply state they are wrong with no real reason at all. It is not like saying matter created matter. Mass and energy are equivalent and if the negative energy of gravity is equal to the positive energy of mass then there is no in balance to be explained. The net energy of the universe will be zero. So no, matter does not create matter, a fluctuation of the vacuum created matter. Now this theory may or may not be true but in order to use the Kalam argument you have to prove they are impossible. The reason for this is that there is no observational evidence to verify the Kalam argument, so all other possibilities must be excluded in order to even consider it as anything approaching a fact. You have not done that. “That assumes a radical verificationist model. Well you would then have problems with universals including the verification principle itself. This would include most variations of the principle as far as I know.” Sorry I have no idea what you are talking about here. “Still...We detect alot of things by the results that they produce. After all we cant see many sub atomic particles but we "deduce" they exist by the results that they produce.” Of course, did you seriously think I was suggesting otherwise? The point is whether we discover sub atomic particles through indirect or direct means, we are still detecting them. No remotely similar claim can be made for god. The existence of certain sub atomic partciels makes predictions which are tested in experiments by physicists, again the god hypothesis does nothing like this. “Could you detect logic? Is it empirical? What about the mathematical world? Are numbers real? Can you sense them? Are you a Platonist?” Maths, Logic etc are all are all methods of human reasoning. They are relevant to the extent that they can describe the real physical world. Of course maths and logic are extremely useful in describing physical reality but without empirical evidence to verify our reasoning they are not very useful. For example Lord Kelvin disputed Darwin’s theory of evolution because he calculated the age of the sun as being too young to allow it. His calculations were apparently spot on. But he didn’t know his physical assumptions were wrong, he didn’t know about nuclear fusion or radioactive decay. So like all maths, logic , modelling etc it’s a question of garbage in garbage out. We need to make empirical measurements to guard against this. That’s how human knowledge progresses. As to whether or not I’m a Platonist, no,if you would like a label to describe my philosophy I guess scientific scepticism is the best fit. You can read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_skepticism But I dont really care about philisophical labels to be honest. “Similarly we have this material world as "proof" for the existence of a creator” Now you are just assuming what you want to prove. You’ll have to do better than that. My position is I don’t know where the material world came from. But to just assume it came from a creator doesn’t solve the problem it just removes it a step and so it is no solution at all. There is no more evidence for a creator than there is evidence for magic. “Here you go again confusing "common sense" with logic.” The problem is as long you are talking about anything in physical reality then strict logic is not sufficient. The Kalam argument makes assumption about the physical world and gives us a supposed answer to some of the problems one can discuss about them. Hence it needs to have some empirical evidence to support it and it has none whatsoever. To give an example of why such logic is insufficient, consider the aether. Every observed wave had a medium to travel through so it was considered light needed a medium to travel through. That turned out to be wrong. It was an empirical study by Michaelson and Morley that discovered this. No one reasoned their way to it. The logic of the argument did not seem unreasonable but when compared to the physical world everyone was surprised to find it was wrong. The Kalam argument makes a similar assumption. Everything needing a cause is no different assumption than every wave needs a medium. We need to compare our reasoning against the physical world to give us a reality check. The Kalam argument now comes off worse than the ether argument because at the time there was no observation to doubt the need for a medium. Now we do have reasons to doubt strict causality operates everywhere in the universe. “All the models you have used, some of which have largely been rejected do not really address how you can complete and "endless task" now do they? If they claim to do so then so much for the model!” Can you give some references which back up your claim that these models have been “largely rejected”? Furthermore I make no claims to solve the paradox of an endless chain of causes. Nor do the models, they merely open the question as to whether there was something before the big bang. If there was something before the big bang then premise 2 fails. “By the way one of the main reasons quantum fluctuation models were rejected was precisely because of this. It lead in many cases to absurd conclusions i.e. contradictions!” Rejected by whom? Again please provide references, otherwise I’m going to assume you mean it’s been rejected by theist rather than physicists. Quantum mechanics has many conclusions which were considered absurd, so what? If that’s reality we have to accept it, seemingly absurd or not. “Well to talk about the bounds of time (unless you spatalise it then we are really only talking space) is a category mistake.” Why is this a mistake? Space and time are considered one object in relativity not two separate unrelated entities. “What came before time? That is the question but the question is wrong. There is no before when we have no time. Sort of like Stephen Hawkings "no boundry" quantum gravity model. Whether or not there was something before the big bang is still an open question. Two main conjectures to describe quantum gravity have been proposed. Loop quantum gravity and string theory. Both of these have been used to predict a physical reality before the big bang, here are some links that describe them: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070702084231.htm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1270726.stm Now it could be that both of these conjectures are wrong, but at the moment I cant see how one can say anything other than its an open question. You seem to just jump to conclusions for reasons that I can only guess simply suit your conclusion. Furthermore the conclusion Stephen Hawkings drew from his no boundary model were certainly not yours so I find it amusing you refer to him, to quote him: One could say: "The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary." The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE. (From a brief History of Time ) “Vacuums are strictly speaking not "space".” Well of course that just a linguistic question about how you define vacuums and how you define space. One could say that the vacuum is not really empty because of its fluctuations but then would could say nothing is really empty and space in the common understanding of “nothingness” simply has no known counterpart in reality. “Even if we have paradoxes on both sides of river it does not give us an allowance to accept them! We have to find ways to resolve them.” That’s somewhere where we have common ground. I agree with you 100%. Where we may disagree is that I don’t assume the paradoxes can be solved by introducing an invisible magic being who we can declare as above all natural laws to solve those paradoxes. There is no problem we can’t solve by inferring the existence of magic, but without physical evidence that such magic exists we can’t accept such explanations. You can replace the word magic with god and the conclusion is the same. If we don’t have a solution to the paradox one should be humble and admit that is the case, theists seem to be unable to do that.

I meant an atheism and a muslim sorry if thats wasnt clear. Ive changed the heading now. Ive also written a response to ghalis criticism but am awaiting some real physicists to check it over. As to Skyrads point on whether there is a real underlying cause in QM that we havent detetced yet. Well perhaps there is but thats not really the point. The Kalam argument has to assume that there is and all Im arguing is that its premature given our current understanding.

Last Sunday I went to the real speakers corner in Hyde Park London and have agreed to carry on a debate with Muslim chap I met there. I asked to post our back and forth here as we get so little Muslim views in this forum and he agreed. So here is it below and I will continue to post it up for anyone who is interested to join , perhaps Ghali will sign up and post direct. PHILH: Hi Got something of a quiet moment at work so I thought Id write a little something on why I don’t buy the argument you presented on Sunday. I’m going to use the wikipedia definition of the Kalam argument here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalam_cosmological_argument Premise 1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause. Premise 2: The universe began to exist. Conclusion 1: Therefore, the universe must have a cause. That cause is god. (last bit my addition) The second premise is usually supported by the following argument: An actual infinite cannot exist. A beginningless series of events is an actual infinite Therefore, the universe cannot have existed infinitely in the past, as that would be a beginningless series of events. I’m going to assume they have summarized the argument correctly. If that is not correct please let me know. My problems 1 Premise one is pure assertion. It is not clear at all that this is the case. Quantum events are often considered to be cause less. As Heisenberg said “I believe that indeterminism, that is the nonvalidity of rigorous causality, is necessary, and not just consistently possible. “ Bohr also said“The renunciation of the ideal of causality in atomic physics . . . has been forced upon us . . . “ The argument relies on causality holding throughout the universe; therefore something operating without causality must be outside of the universe. But if physists such as Bohr and Heisenberg are correct then we do not need to go outside the universe to look for an event without a cause hence the entire argument collapses. Now it’s not for me to assess the validity of Bohr’s and Heisenberg’s statements. But it is enough to at least cast doubt on premise 1. But even without QM premise 1 is actually a contradiction to its conclusion. The conclusion of course is that there is something without a cause namely god, but the premise is that there is nothing without a cause. So there is a contradiction. The only way out of the contradiction is to make the argument you made on Sunday, which is the rules don’t apply to god as he is outside of the universe. The problem with this, is one could just as easily postulate there is something inside the universe that can violate laws as outside. Since there is no way to verify either, both are just speculations. We have no way of knowing if one, both or neither is true. This brings me on to a more fundamental point. Arguments are not evidence. One can argue until one is blue in the face as to some aspect of reality that we cannot detect, but ultimately its detection that settles the argument. If god is outside of space and time how are we supposed to detect him? It’s a get out of jail free card for any reasonable standard of evidence, how convenient. No matter how reasonable ones argument may seem, without physical evidence to back it up we should not have such a high level of confidnce in its conlusion as religious people seem to me to have. Argument for the existence of the aether seemed very reasonable but physical evidence often contradicts what appears to be sound logic. 2 Premise 2 is also shaky. Of course most people agree that the Big Bang is verified by the data. But there are many cosmological models that postulate events prior to the big bang. One example of this is Brane Cosmology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brane_cosmology Alternatively consider eternal inflation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_inflation Whether these speculations will be shown to be correct or false remains to be seen, but neither are known to be inconsistent with known physics or observations. Premise 2 requires that they are indeed disallowed by physics and that is far from certain, so we cannot yet say that it is correct. 3. The premise that denies physical infinity is also an assertion without evidence. It’s asserting actual infinites do not physically exist. But this is something we just don’t know. To accept them gives us a paradox of course. But to deny them also gives us a paradox. For example if space and time are not infinite what bounds them? If we can accept time exists infinitely in the future, we are being inconsistent to deny it infinitely in the past. Whether infinites exist in reality we have at this time, no way of knowing. One way round the paradox is simply to go Harry Potter and say lets just replace laws of nature with magic. If we allow for magic then one can explain away any paradox. How did Hermione Granger take 6 hours of classes in one four hour period? Well she used magic of course. Problem solved. To introduce a being who is outside of space and time, whom we have no way of physically detecting is no different to answering a question with: it’s magic. Such as answer is no answer at all. GHALI'S RESPONSE: Sorry about the delay in replying! Great to hear from you. Ok lets look into your objections. > My problems > 1 Premise one is pure assertion. It is not clear at all that this is > the case. Quantum events are often considered to be cause less. Well the Quantum world on one interpretation talks strictly in statisical models. So yes we can energy fluctations that produce "virtual particles" if you wish. Hey why not real particles as well. You see that is all nice and well but we are talking about the totality of matter including the "side constraints" that allow this to happen. Causality in my eye is another way "sufficient reasons" if you wish so this model fails radically if we take it as an explaination of matter as a whole. That is the reason why we can apply the "ad hoc" qualification for Allah and not for the "internal" material system that he creates. It is like saying that I have explained how matter came into being using matter. . > This brings me on to a more fundamental point. > Arguments are not evidence. One can argue until one is blue in the > face as to some aspect of reality that we cannot detect, but > ultimately its detection that settles the argument. If god is outside > of space and time how are we supposed to detect him? That assumes a radical verificationist model. Well you would then have problems with universals including the verification principle itself. This would include most variations of the principle as far as I know. Could you detect logic? Is it empirical? What about the mathematical world? Are numbers real? Can you sense them? Are you a Platonist? Still...We detect alot of things by the results that they produce. After all we cant see many sub atomic particles but we "deduce" they exist by the results that they produce. Similarly we have this material world as "proof" for the existence of a creator " Argument for > the existence of the aether seemed very reasonable but physical > evidence often contradicts what appears to be sound logic." Here you go again confusing "common sense" with logic. Logic does not tell you how things are. It just claims to say what are and what are not valid arguments. It shows you how to preserve truth in an argument if you wish. A bit a of "rule of the thumb" but it does help here. > 2 Premise 2 is also shaky. All the models you have used, some of which have largely been rejected do not really address how you can complete and "endless task" now do they? If they claim to do so then so much for the model! By the way one of the main reasons quantum fluctuation models were rejected was precisely because of this. It lead in many cases to absurd conclusions i.e. contradictions! > 3. The premise that denies physical infinity is also an assertion > without evidence. It's asserting actual infinites do not physically > exist. But this is something we just don't know. To accept them gives > us a paradox of course. But to deny them also gives us a paradox. For > example if space and time are not infinite what bounds them? Well to talk about the bounds of time (unless you spatalise it then we are really only talking space) is a category mistake. What came before time? That is the question but the question is wrong. There is no before when we have no time. Sort of like Stephen Hawkings "no boundry" quantum gravity model. Similarly we can only reasonably talk of boundaries when we view space as something that can be deformed, twisted etc... Think of the maths of Topology. Vacuums are strictly speaking not "space". At least on this view we can help the paradox. Nothing by definition has no boundaries! Even if we have paradoxes on both sides of river it does not give us an allowance to accept them! We have to find ways to resolve them. Your argument in a nutshell is a tu quoque fallacy

I wonder if theres a single major event in histroy that doesnt have a nutty conspiracy theory. the poeple campaigning against vaccines are real scumbags. These are medical miracles that have saved countless millions of lives, that peeople can let their ridiculous parnoia over rule that staggers belief.

The best way to decieve others, is first deiceve yourself.

theyre dummy rigs, some teams where them to get a better simulation of the real things.

Well you also get a games machine that can do 1.8 trillion floating point calculation per second. I agree if it were just to play go sports skydiving, I wouldnt buy it either. But games llike Motorstrom, Resistance, Ratchet and Clank, Unchartered are well worth it.

Relativity has replaced Newtonian physics as a more accurate theory of gravity. But that doesnt change the inverse square law, its still valid. So your statement is correct but irrelevant. "So all it would take for astrological effects to occur through gravity would be if the curvature of spacetime effected by large objects were more complex than Einstein theorized. Einstein may have gotten it mostly right but maybe there were smaller effects that he overlooked" Let me rephraspe your comment is a more meanigfull way, all it would take is a completley new set of physical laws or to ignore all the data and re write the laws of physcis because a bunch of suckers like Nanacy Reagan et al go to an Astrologer for advice. Popularity does not mean validity. Remember yor history of science. Rerlativity and Newtonian gravity agree in most cases, its only in a few extreme cases where they disagree. Thats why relativity was discovered so much later than Newton's theory. Its effects are much harder to percieve and as a consequence has very little effect on our lives. Any new modification to physical laws (and sucha mdofication is not impossible) will likely have even less notcieable effects and therefore will have close to 0 relevance to our day to day lives. "But if I came up with evidence proving the validity of astrology, the last thing I would do would be to publish it in a statistics journal. Instead I would sell what I know to a select circle of wealthy clients who would be able to benefit from my insights. " "In short, I would not give away my trade secrets by publishing them in a journal! " So what you are saying is if there were any data validating astrology one wouldnt see it in the data, thats pretty convenient. Its really no different to claiming I have an invisble unicorn that humans cant perceive

i really enjoyed the PS3 game. The graphics are pretty nice , the freestle movemtns are awesome and the 4 ways not bad. Best of all is landing, Im finding it quite addictive. It certainly has its flaws , especially the 6 axis control can be awkard for the 4 way but Im getting the hang of it now and have turned 15 points on a dive and unlocked th night mode. Anyone know how to do unbelievable moves? Overall this is not a great game but $5 i think its well worth it, get your whuffo freinds to give it a go and they will get what the sports about straight away, well apart from bravery point for pulling at 650 ft!

Siva Ganesha , the correlation you expect may sound reasonable. But it doesn’t matter how reasonable it sounds, what matter is whether the data actually backs up what you say. That’s the difference between real science and pseudo science, real science has to back up its claims with data, and pseudo science like astrology, alt medicine, etc doesn’t. In this case, the study showed the marriage data was perfectly consistent with a random model. The data came straight out the Uk census data! So your implication that the statistician’s motive played a part is completely without foundation. If you want to get anyone to take your ideas of birth date effects seriously, do the study yourself, get it published in a reputable statistics journal and people will take you seriously, without that people will quite rightly dismiss such ideas. As far as which type of astrology is valid, I’m afraid there’s no evidence that any form is valid. Please provide peer reviewed data that says otherwise or accept the conclusion. “I hate to kick a guy when he's dead, but a good example would be Carl Sagan. That guy was definitely a professional sceptic, and definitely had a vested interest--or at least publicly proclaimed himself to have a vested interest--in disproving everything he didn't understand. “ I can only guess you have never read anything by Carl Sagan. He was a great public advocate of the scientific method. This does not in any way imply trying to disprove something just because it is not understood. Scientists do the opposite, they study what is not understood so that it can become understood. There is no point in doing scientific research on problems that are already solved; it’s done on problems which have not been solved. Nobody got a PhD, a research grant or a Nobel Prize for discovering something already known. To quote Carl Sagan “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known” That is really the spirit of science. Scientists don’t try and disprove something just because they don’t understand, in fact they try and disprove everything. That which cannot be disproved is more likely to be accepted. That which can be disproved is discarded. That’s why scientific scrutiny is more likely to be leading us to the truth than any other form of inquiry. To quote Carl Sagan again “Sceptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense. “

Randi did a nice experiment. He worte horoscopes for students and asked them to rate it for accuracy. Most found them to be remarkably accuarte , then they were asked to swap with each other. Each horroscope was exactly the same!

"For example, if a large number of investors in a given stock expect the stock to drop for astrological reasons, then the stock WILL drop because many of the investors believing in astrology will sell. " No there would have to be a significant numbers of astrologically minded investors for that to happen, a couple of cranks putting a sell order in isnt going to do much. Most investing is not done by individuals its done by institutional investors and they are not known to be looking at astrology. So Im sure a skeptical investor will be just fine. "As to whether astrology has an original basis in verifiable scientific fact independent of the fact that many people believe in it, I'm not sure. I do know that I've spent a lot of time around people who believe in it." You may not be sure, anyone who has studied physics will be very sure that it doesn not have any scientific basis. There is no known mechanism for the planets to influence our life. Anyone that wants to take it seriously might consider suggesting one. Of course if there is a genuine effect then maybe we could consider it wihtout a mechanism. But the evidence is clear there is no realtionship. Manchester Univeristy did the biggets study ever. They took Uk census data and examined whether marriages were consistent with chance or with astrology. they were studying tens of millions of people and so even a small effect would be picked up, it wasnt. The results were perefctly in sync with chance. You can read about it here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,2149800,00.html

"I was trying to demonstrate that the existence or non-existence of any god is unprovable and therefore lies in faith. The believer has faith that god does exist. The non-believer has faith that god doesn't exist. " I think this statement is absurd. Replace the word god with the phrase "invisible (to any form of human perception) dragon in my living room" in your statment and hopefully you will see. The beliver in the invisble dragon does have faith,the non believer does not require faith it merely requires lack of evidence. Same with god. I believe in things based upon the evidence for them, no evidence= no belief. Not believing should not then be treated equally as believing.

"As far as the FDA not representing our interests -- look how many drugs have been recalled because they found out *later* that they were harmful. For such occurrences, I blame both the big pharm companies and the FDA for not doing its due diligence. For that reason among others, I don't trust what the FDA says. " I can only think of only a handful of drugs which have been pulled post release. Comapre this with the thousands of drugs that have been approved. Id be suprised if you could show me that the failure rate of the FDA was much higher than in any other industries. Every industry is subject to failure, planes crash , parachutes fail, cars break down. I doubt theres an industry on Earth that dooesnt occasionally make mistakes. The FDa includes a post release follow up in its testing and yes that occasionally finds a drug that is more dangerous than was revealed in tests. The fact that these drugs are then withdrawn from the market shows the system is generally working. In the case of the safety of cloned meat , this isnt just one study , Ill paste the quote from the link I gave above in case you didnt read it: "FDA has reviewed over 400 studies that have evaluated the safety of food from cloned animals and has concluded that the food from these animals is no different from normal animal food products. These studies have encompassed detailed comparative analysis for known nutrients and potential toxins, feeding trials utilizing several different animals, taste comparisons and visual evaluations by many independent laboratories. All have concluded that there is no difference in the relative nutrient content or safety between foods from cloned animals and foods from conventionally produced animals. For the above reasons, this committee is completely supportive of the FDA risk assessment statement. Federation of Animal Science Societies Scientific Advisory Committee on Food Safety, Animal Health, and Animal Drugs Members: Dr. Gary L. Cromwell, Chair Professor University of Kentucky Dept of Animal/Food Sciences 609 WP Garrigus Bldg Lexington, KY 40546 Email: gcromwel@uky.edu Dr. Andrew L. Skidmore Livestock Technical Service Manager Schering-Plough Animal Health 9379 Alexander Road Alexander, NY 14005 Email: andrew.skidmore@spcorp.com Dr. Kathryn J. Boor Professor Cornell University Food Science Dept 413 Stocking Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 Email: kjb4@cornell.edu Dr. Robert A. Norton, Jr. Auburn University 231 Ann Upchurch Hall Auburn University, AL 36849-5416 Email: rnorton@acesag.auburn.edu Dr. William A. Olson Consultant/Owner Center for Regulatory Services, Inc. 5200 Wolf Run Shoals Road Woodbridge, VA 22192 Email: cfrsrv@aol.com Dr. Michael Allen Payne Program Director WIFSS University of California-Davis One Shields Avenue Davis, CA 95616 Email: mpayne@ucdavis.edu Dr. Rodney (Rod) L. Preston Professor Emeritus 191 Columbia Court Pagosa Springs, CO 81147-7650 Email: RLPreston@centurytel.net Brian W. Sheldon Professor and Dept Extension Leader North Carolina State University Dept of Poultry Science Box 7608 Raleigh, NC 27695-7608 Email: brian_sheldon@ncsu.edu Dr. Gary C. Smith Colorado State University Dept of Animal Sciences Center for Red Meat Safety Fort Collins, CO 80523 Email: gary.smith@colostate.edu

"And for calling me a paranoid conspiracy nut, I highly recommend that you eat cloned meat once it hits the market. " Well how is your argument that the FDa is not to be trusted any different to those that say we cant trust NASA when they sadi we went to moon? A genuine criticism would have been to address the methodology of the study, that you did not do. By the way the FDa isnt the only organisation to conclude that cloned food is safe. The Federation of Animal Science Socities supported the FDa's conclusion read more here: http://www.fass.org/page.asp?pageID=191 Are they in on the conspiracy to hide the truth as well? As fas as eating cloned meat goes, as a veggie, not gonna happen unless this proves succesful: in vitro meat: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_vitro_meat If we all went veggie we might cut carbon emissions by a staggering 21% evidence for that here: http://www.physorg.com/news4998.html I find it amusing that people that seem so concerned about their enivorment are rarely keen on even making this move, something that will involve little cost but could have huge impacts. Another thing I find amusing is that people are so keen on fear of future food technologies, but dont seem to care about the real threat to food supply which is over fishing. Many sciensits believe fish could be extinct for human consumption in a few decades, read more here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10433-no-more-seafood-by-2050.html You see far more people scare mongering new food technologies such as Gm or cloning than you see people worrying about fish stocks. Seems to me then that such fears are driven by anti technology or anti capitlaist agendas and have nothing to do with genuine scientific concerns.

Tom Cruise certainly has some nutty beliefs, following a religion with no evidence to back up its silly claims. But some how I dont think such a description applies only to him or to scientology.

I am a veggie and can highly reccomend it, no need to wait for cloned meat.

"The FDA is a tool for the big food and pharm companies, so what would anyone expect? The FDA's word cannot be trusted, so I don't care how long their report is (even the most educated of consumers would probably not read through it anyhow). " Do you have any evidence to back up the claim that FDA faked the evidence on th safety of this food? Whenever scientific studies are presented, paranoid conspiracy nuts usually go on about how the evdience against them was faked, its reminds me of a self reinforcing delusion. "Cloned meat and genetically modified foods serve a single purpose: to maximize corporate profits" Thats true, but its also true for tv's, parachutes, cars, clothes and most other things we produce ; its called capitalism. Capitalism is the worst economic system we've ever thought of, excpet for all the other ones. if you have a good alternative to capitalism , Im sure economists would love to hear it , but so far no ones comes up with anything good. I await your suggestions, until then stop bitching about the profit motive, its how things get produced and produced effeciently. Having said that i agre with Bilvon that we need to be concerned about mainting gentic diveristy. But threats to gentic diversty are not just specific to new food technologies, witness the potatoe famine . Concerns may be justified but paranoin delusion about giant conspiracies are not.