Yes it does. I do admit that. But consider - if God were there, couldn't he just... push a little harder than a delusion ever could? In an evolution-controlled universe (which would pretty much necessitate a 4.5 billion-year-old Earth, which would necessitate a 12 billion + year-old universe), the only place I can ever see God able to interfere is at the start - at the Big Bang. Other than that, nature and natural laws can do everything else, and it makes more sense to allow them to, than to blame it all on an "unknowable being".
BUT, you still have to be aware of the very real possibility of pregnancy, physical damage, and disease. If someone is too young physically, even if they know all about it, it can be very harmful.
I wouldn't have used the term "delusion", since that has so many negative connotations, but yes, basically. Something that is not there, yet the subject wants to be there, so he imagines it, or his subconscious triggers it.
Which is why people need to be educated, no matter how embarrassing it may be. If you don't know these facts, you will be in trouble sooner or later.
It is too young if the person can't understand sex, it is too young if the person can be harmed by sex, and it's probably too young if the person can't get pregnant (the real, biological reason for sex in the first place). As to a definite age, that's hard to say. It all depends on the culture, he maturity level of the individual, and the physical maturity of the individual. There are cultures (mostly tribal cultures), even in the present day, who introduce their children to sex (or, at least, the ideas, ideals and goals of sex) before puberty. There are cultures, like the Mbuti pygmies of Africa, who are completely open about sex from a child's birth - mostly because they live in one room grass huts with no doors. There are also cultures, like the US, who are so paranoid about sex that they never discuss it - not even among adults, usually. Additionally, children around the world, especially in the developed world (USA, Europe, Japan, etc), are developing faster than ever and going through puberty earlier than ever - one theory I heard was there are too many steroids in fast-food burgers (from the cows). This leads to hormone-driven early teens and sometimes late preteens with no knowledge about sex, protection, or pregnancy. Unless we can deal with this, this could quickly become a major problem.
@Styx, dancewaterdance, and whoever the heck else is in this argument - The ancient Native Americans could very easily trigger visions of their deities, spirits, and powerful beings by fasting, mourning, and intentionally putting themselves through hardships. These spirits would then impart wisdom to them, and in legend at least, all their technology and all their techniques for healing, hunting, etc. came from these vision spirits. All of this was without Peyote. I think all these experiences were what they wanted to happen. They wanted it so badly, and they were in such a weakened state, they began to hallucinate. Now, because of their culture's heavy emphasis on spirituality (it permeated everything), they saw images from their myths. I think, these atheists who sense God are undergoing some kind of lesser version of this. They, probably subconsciously, want god to exist, and to hear him, so they get some weird kind of feeling (that I have never felt, by the way, despite being raised in a very Christian home) that they interpret as a religious experience. that's all I think it is. If it makes them better people, then so much the better. If it makes them happy, I say go for it. But, I do not believe it was God, in any way, shape, or form.
Sounds like neo-hippy crap to me. It's full of depressing phrases that make no sense when put together. It's people like the guy who wrote that song who are responsible for the state of our country. They have lost all faith in the US, and because of that, they get cynical, and start bashing anything and everything, lowering the morale of the nation. I swear, if people just believed we could win, like they did in WW1 and WW2, we would. We are killing vast numbers of terrorists for every one soldier, yet all the public hears is which of our soldiers dies. Same thing went for Vietnam. We won every single battle of that war. Not once did we ever get pushed back. Yet, because of public opinion, misled by people like that songwriter and an extremely sensationalist press, we pulled out.
There are no monkeys in our ancestry at all, and there are no monkey-like creatures for quite a while (at least 10 million years, probably longer). We evolved from ape-like creatures, much smarter and much larger than monkeys and, luckily for us, more aggressive (otherwise, we would not have survived). In fact, recent DNA analyses show that Australopithecenes and Chimpanzee descendants could probably interbred for at least 3 million years (probably slowing down our evolution, and probably resulting in a sterile offspring, like a mule), proving that our ancestors were more ape than monkey. But other than that, good point.
It would be more rude to intrude on someone's life when they don't want you to (in my case, for instance).
Your friend just sounds like he(?)'s going through a bitchy period right now. I've felt that myself - just lashing out with no real reason. It always passes.
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/archaeology/dating/ Carbon dating is not the only technique we can use, and we HAVE taken all these problems into account when using carbon dating. Typically, an archaeologist in the field sends multiple samples to be dated, from different parts on the same horizon in each site, plus other samples from other horizons. The amount of artifacts and remains available for dating is incredibly large as well, ranging from shells to bones to charcoal to dirt, depending on which technique you use. Believe me, dating techniques have come a long way since the 70s, or whenever the reports you read came from. Also, the only time anything outside of earth affects carbon dating is during periods of EXTREME sunspot activity, or a large solar flare striking earth. Unfortunately, one such period did occur right around the time the Americas were being populated, so we can't rely wholly on carbon-14 dates for that. But it's kind of obvious we can't trust c14 at that point in time when one date says 12,000 years BP and another says 50,000. Regardless of these minor problems, the majority of dates obtained by this method check out with other methods and, where we have them, with ethnographic analyses.
Yes, I will limit time, or at least, time as is relevant to this universe. The universe exploded out of some chance reaction in the pre-universal mote (that was without size, since there was no universe to give it size), over 12 billion years ago (we have not yet been able to see the dawn of time, because we can't look far enough away (as you look farther in space, you look back in time), but we can see that the universe gets progressively smaller and the galaxies progressively closer together as we look farther away), and before that, who can know? It may have been another universe, if the previous one collapsed, or it may have been some kind of trans-universal bubble starting off the Big Bang, or something as yet incomprehensible to conventional science. Evolution is most definitely NOT a design. It is random chance guided only by successful and unsuccessful genes. You can put total faith in science because eventually, science will answer every question meaningful to mankind. Scientists can do a lot more than speculate. We can observe many processes in action, including evolution, and, to an extent, prove them. We can, in a basic way, guide evolution. The only thing left for us to do is start off the whole process from non-living elements.
Yes, but being the intelligent beings we are, we should not think like animals - only about our geneflow. We should think with the so-called "Human element". Besides, it rarely comes down to a choice of either-or. All this is beside the point, anyways. The question is, if you KNOW, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that someone was going to kill someone else, would you kill him to stop him? In which case, my answer stands - until the final moment, where the killer is poised to kill, do everything short of killing him. Once the killer, however, is right in front of (behind, wherever) the victim, with his weapon, ready to kill within seconds, and you have the means, kill him. Before that exact moment, fight him, grab the weapon, talk, knock him out, whatever you can. Once the moment comes, then you act. It's the only reasonable course of action.
Now, don't get me wrong - I do enjoy swinging a wooden sword around (it keeps me from getting too fat), but I don't dress up to do it, and I don't make a fool out of myself online while I do it, and I certainly don't tell people about it (except here, of course).
Well, you not only have to think about benefits of graduation, but workload. Trust me, Baccalaureate is a HUGE amount of work, if the advanced classes I took in the US are any indication. If you go into that school, plan on not having much of a social life, either IRL or online. Too much homework. A degree from an Ivy League college (or whatever you have where you live) may look VERY attractive to potential employers, but it's also some of the hardest work you've ever done in your life. I'm not saying don't do it, or that it's not worth it (it is - very much so), I just want you to think long and hard about it - especially about the amount of work you'll have to do, because believe me, it will be many times more work than middle school.
I would say it's a last resort - if the guy is right there, in front of his victim, with the murder weapon, then it becomes justified - and legal. At any time before that, negotiation and diplomacy work best and won't get you life in prison.
Ok, what I see here is that this show is more comedy than news. It's a way for an established news source to let off some steam in a way that makes people laugh, and for once, they're not obsessed with fucking political correctness. I applaud these guys for being brave enough to stand up to the uneducated American general public. These guys are playing to a more educated crowd - one that understands humor and sarcasm. I mean, really, no offense to any Canadians out there, but does Canada really have anything worth the lives it might cost to invade? I mean, maybe economically, or hidden natural resources (oil, etc), but nothing worth taking the risk on. Most of Canada isn't even inhabited.
I would not want excessive chest hair, but a little is just fine. Idk, since I'm never gonna get a date anyway (picture 315lbs, out of shape, greasy hair, acne, etc), I don't really care what I look like.
that's not to say most "new" movies are bad... just re-used. I quite enjoyed the effects of Day The Earth Stood Still, and the Narnia movies are MANY times better than their 1980s predecessors. I would, however, enjoy something new at some point.
Convenient, isn't it, how the Christians (and other religions) throw the "unknowable" concept of eternity in the faces of unbelievers whenever they have an unanswerable question or logical fallacy?
