LondonLax

I think the next generation of Iraqis will grow up in a country where there is equal representation in parliament of people standing up for their own rights instead of living under a dictatorship representing a minority group but staying in power through force. When Saddam died he was meant to have his son take over who was even more brutal than he was by all accounts. For that reason I think the war was worth it. I think we should look at taking a more active part in Zimbabwe and Burma against their brutal governments. The idea that the people dieing there are not British so they are not our problem doesn't wash with me.

It really is a shame the government didn't build up large budget surpluses in the boom years like many other governments just in case we had a down turn. What I can't fathom is how Brown claimed he ended the boom and bust cycle when he wasn't putting money away during the boom years.

Classic post, I'm still laughing. Mushrooms were like that with me - they never made me hallucinate, even when smaller quantities of the same batch were having that effect on others. What they did do though (especially when washed down with some white wine) was produce that "detailed concentration" effect that you describe so well. With me it was mainly noticeable with music. I can remember listening to - appropriately enough - The Byrds' "Eight Miles High", and I found that I could listen to every nuance of every separate instrument and voice with equal attention, simultaneously. Absolutely amazing. I love mushrooms. My best ever drug experience was with them.

I tried 'Cake' once. It's a 'made up' drug from eastern europe. It did my head in but I laughed about it for a while.

You sound like a few tottenham fans I know.

It's more likely they will play in the 6(7) nations because all there players are based in Europe. They would be flying long haul for every match in the Tri nations. The problem with either option is do they make the effort to play the home games in South America or do they just stick with basing it all in Europe.

Statistically, what is it that 9 out of 10 people enjoy? Gang rape.

Humans have known the world was round for a lot longer than popular culture would have you believe. Ancient Greeks suspected the world was round and by the middle ages it was common knowledge. Anyone with any sort of education know the world was round by the time Columbus set sail. The dispute was actually about the distance to china heading west from Europe not whether it was possible or not. Most scientists at the time thought it was far too far for any of their ships to travel without seeing land to restock (and they were right). Columbus thought their calculations were wrong however and the distance was much shorter, he was wrong but fortunatly for him he stumbled onto another mass of land half way that he could land on and get food/freshwater.

I couldnt find much Tiesto on there and I wanted to listen to Seenenluft - Manila but it's not there either so i was a bit dissappointed. Youtube still has more music. I guess it will take time to populate.

Well for your first question, evolution takes a lot of time. We happened to get there first. There were other creatures like neanderthals who may well be able do all those things had they not become extinct and perhaps many thousands of years in the future other species will develop those abilities. In you second question I believe God is a man made idea. It's is useful for humans to invent a god or gods for so many reasons and we have been doing it in every period of history in almost every part of the world.

But even if that were true and there was an Adam and Eve and all Humans came from their perfect relatives the bible is really pushing it when it asks you to believe it happened again after the "great flood". Now we are all descended from Noah's family as well. Were they all perfect too? And every breeding pair of animals? Were they all genetically perfect? How did they all get on that boat anyway? Did the marsupials happily hop round the world to Australia? And the Bison casually walk back to the Americas to start their population growth over there? If you are going to start taking it literally but there are things within that are demonstratably wrong then that casts doubt over the whole book. You would have to start questioning if any of it is right. It may contain some historical accuracies within the legends and stories of the people of that time but to use is as a scientifically accurate way to explain the history of our universe is literally absurd and quite dangerous as it closes the mind off to possibilities which may be right but do not fit the bible model.

Well that is the secret of the success of horoscopes and the fame of Nostrodamus types. Just keep every thing quite vague and general, don't put in any hard dates or facts. The believers will be convinced and the sceptics will have a difficult time pinning down the inaccuracies.

There definitely isn't a God, and that's why. Salted popcorn, UGH! What is it with you english and your sweet popcorn. That is kiddy stuff you grow out of when you are 10. Salted is the only way to go.

Actually the bit at the end says the opposite...according to Exodus...many many Egyptians left Egypt and became alien residents and became part of the nation of Israel. Under the Mosaic law those alien residents were to be treated kindly the same as any Israelite. All God asked was that Pharaoh let the Israelites go...however they were slaves and the Egyptian's no doubt made good use of them ..using them to do all the tasks they didn't wish to carry out. It was Pharaoh who bought the plagues on his people by ignoring Moses's plea...according to Exodus Well my understanding was that god actually asked Moses to ask the egyptions to let them go. That is a bit different, having a slave leader ask to have slaves freed was probably not an unusual request of a Pharoah. I'm sure if god had asked the Pharoah more directly he my have had better results in convincing him and everyone would have lived happily ever after. It's a bit unfair on the Egyptions though to lay waste to them for not believing in the Jewish god when they had no reason to believe in a Jewish god. There was no bible for them to learn about back then and God wasn't making himself available to anyone but the Jews.

The part I don't get is why the Egyptions were not gods people too. God had not given them access to scriptures and spoken to them directly like he did to the Jews. Why should they be punished for not believing in him when they were not give the same opportunites to believe as gods chosen people were?

You mean 65-100 years after he was born right? So about 30 to 70 years after he died? Give or take.

Bronze Age Farmers????!!!...well let's take a look at the writer of the first 5 books of the Bible... Moses Moses was bought up by Pharoah's family as a son...He became mighty in letters and words...having being educated by no doubt some of the finest teacher's to be found anywhere being as they were the then rulers of the so called civilized world Egypt. One only has to look at their pyramids and artifacts to know that Moses would have harldy grown up a Bronze age farmer! Egyptian Astronomer's mapped the skies!!.. That household would also have had access to one of the finest libraries ever known to man...namely to be found in the city of Alexandria. there is no evidence outside of the bible that Moses even existed. Well he is in the quran too isn't he? If that counts.

I take it you don't want to talk about evolution anymore - you've ignored all the points I've made. The truth of the Bible is a whole other debate surely. But does God know everything, is he omnisicient in your opinion? IF there is a God, then its not a matter if he is omnisicient or not. He would not be God if he wasnt. He does know everything, but that does not mean that he made any decisions for us. Just because he knows our future does not mean he made it that way. So you admit God knows our future - which means 'free will' does not exist. Thank you. Your particular religion's version of god is logically impossible. PS: If "he did not make it that way" then who did??? Is this your way of admitting your god is not omnipotent after all?? Blimey, he looks more and more unlikely by the minute. He KNOWS our future. He did not MAKE our future. He made free will and then we used that free will and made our own future. He sees the future we made. If you think this debate is such a joke, why spend so much of your time in it? But he knows our future from before we are born. Our fates are decided before we are even concieved. Some of us will be "damned" and some of us will be "saved". God knew which ones thousands of years ago before humans were created, why bother with this puppet show universe then if he already knows the script that would play out thousands of years in advance? Why not just put some souls in heaven and some in hell from the beginning and be done with it? It's a paradox that baffles me. I wont pretend to know the mind of God. BUT, personally? I think that we had to experience life on earth. If he did indeed chose to just slam us in heaven, then we would in effect, never have chosen to follow him. We would just end up there and have no memory of the choice to follow him, because it never happened. It's just something we need to live through. Well god also made the universe and everything in it. He made it knowing which of the humans he was making would go to heaven and which of them would go to hell. How can you still argue the humans had a choice in the matter? At what point did they have a choice if their fates were decided as they were being made?

I take it you don't want to talk about evolution anymore - you've ignored all the points I've made. The truth of the Bible is a whole other debate surely. But does God know everything, is he omnisicient in your opinion? IF there is a God, then its not a matter if he is omnisicient or not. He would not be God if he wasnt. He does know everything, but that does not mean that he made any decisions for us. Just because he knows our future does not mean he made it that way. So you admit God knows our future - which means 'free will' does not exist. Thank you. Your particular religion's version of god is logically impossible. PS: If "he did not make it that way" then who did??? Is this your way of admitting your god is not omnipotent after all?? Blimey, he looks more and more unlikely by the minute. He KNOWS our future. He did not MAKE our future. He made free will and then we used that free will and made our own future. He sees the future we made. If you think this debate is such a joke, why spend so much of your time in it? But he knows our future from before we are born. Our fates are decided before we are even concieved. Some of us will be "damned" and some of us will be "saved". God knew which ones thousands of years ago before humans were created, why bother with this puppet show universe then if he already knows the script that would play out thousands of years in advance? Why not just put some souls in heaven and some in hell from the beginning and be done with it?

I take it you don't want to talk about evolution anymore - you've ignored all the points I've made. The truth of the Bible is a whole other debate surely. But does God know everything, is he omnisicient in your opinion? IF there is a God, then its not a matter if he is omnisicient or not. He would not be God if he wasnt. He does know everything, but that does not mean that he made any decisions for us. Just because he knows our future does not mean he made it that way. You must see the problem with that though? He knows our future from before we are born. What chance did we have do decide it?

That is my understanding also, although I am no expert on the quran. I understood that it instructed women to dress in a respectful way and different cultures have interprited it in different ways from just a scalf to a full body covering.

There is no such thing as "random" in terms of the universe. There is always a reason something happens. The roulette bell ends up in the slot it did because of the gravety on it, the spin on the wheel, the wind resistance etc. Nothing is "random", there are explinations for everything.

Thats pretty much it as all the unsuccessful mutations are less likely to live long enough to breed and make more unsuccessful mutations. The dog breeding example is valid, we make new breeds of dog this way (plants and other animals too). With an overseer (i.e. us) it is a much faster more accurate process than in nature, we pick the right dogs for the qualities we want and breed them together getting a new stronger, faster (or whatever we want) type of dog. If there is no one to control the process as in nature it is a far slower more inprecise process taking millions of years.

You have made a mistake in your understanding of evolution with that bit.

?? Sounds like more support for evolution. If God had designed our eyes why give us a blind spot in them? Why not give us hawk like vision if we were his supposed favourite? Why give us an appendix etc? Perhaps because our bodies were not created by a perfect being but by an imperfect process of evolution?