Secular Café Archive

[quote=""Greatest I am""]Can't you decide?[/quote]

... moi li pas comprendre, bwana!

[quote=""lpetrich""]Color vision is a result of gene duplications in photoreceptor-protein genes.[/quote] Gosh, you know so much about the subject Ipetrich. It is a pleasure to read you, although I am not sure I understand everything. In my simple mind, to detect light would be a...

[quote=""espritch""]Let us assume for a moment, that Intelligent Design is a legitimate theory and try to determine what we can infer about the designer. Let's consider the human immune system. [/quote] One of the favorite argument of Intelligent Design is, the human eye. How can...

[quote=""Hermit""] Is it summer solstice for you? Yup, and celebrating our first 40+°C day of the season yesterday..[/QUOTE] Ah! Well, when I came to live in Norway, 40 years ago, my Norwegian wife told me that the winter starts with the first snow. ... then I started teaching me...

[quote=""lpetrich""]Here it is: Fermi Paradox | NexusZine [/quote] Ah, the Fermi paradox that answers Drake Equation's parameter Fi; the chances that an extraterrestrial life would develop an intelligence similar to ours. It is set, arbitrary to one percent. But ... why? And what...

[quote=""lpetrich""][
Here is what might be evidence.[/quote]

Gosh, thanks for sharing, Ipetrich. I merely repeated what I read and ... you know so much!

Some years ago Scientific American had a very good article called, "Are Aliens Among Us?" The idea is this: We can trace all forms of life to a single primordial cell. Could another and entirely different form of life exist on earth? We wouldn't know because we don't know where to start lo...

[quote=""MattShizzle""]For the Non-Americans here - could he face criminal charges in your country for saying this if he did it there?[/quote] Interesting question! I am Norwegian and, truly, I don't know. As a humanist, I feel that anybody could charge anyone for anything and, i...

[quote=""Jackrabbit""]Uh, as someone who still does it regularly at age 68, I can guarantee you it does not. The porn I peruse is still of females. [/quote] ... and I still do it at age 69, my friend! Well, sometimes alone and sometimes with my wife. Intercourse has become diffic...

You may, or may not have enjoyed this mind teaser but my motive was this: We are often misled in our thinking by propaganda or advertisement. I recommend the book Nibbling on Einstein's Brain: Nibbling on Einstein's Brain For example, if I say that a survey showed that only 5 percent of the asked do...

[quote=""MattShizzle""] Got it now. Of course Bristol is closer to the bridge than Bristol is to London. :D Hmmm. Doesn't really work in English if that's the case. Normally a sentence like this has (is) as understood at the end. The other way would be worded Bristol is closer to...

[quote=""Hermit""]Got it now. Of course Bristol is closer to the bridge than Bristol is to London. [/quote]

Yes, that's the idea, Hermit!

[quote=""Hermit""]How can it be?[/quote]the Bristol? A pub or something else named the Bristol?[/QUOTE]

Good try, Hermit. But the answer is in the way I mislead the reader!
I'll wait until tomorrow (European time) before giving the correct answer. I hope you will enjoy it.

[quote=""MattShizzle""]I would say they built it there and then moved it to somewhere closer to Bristol.[/quote] No, it is nothing like that. There is nothing that happened in excess to what I wrote. All is in what I wrote. Mind you, the original story was in Norwegian but I am p...

[quote=""Politesse""]Because the Bristolian doesn't have to weather London traffic in order to get to it.[/quote]

Politesse oblige: Negative, ma'am!
The answer is in what I try to make you to conclude. Read again my sentence!

They built a bridge exactly halfway between London and Bristol. However I maintain that the Bristol is closer to the bridge than London.

How can it be?

This morning, as I went in kitchen to make some coffee, I heard a voice saying: “ Good morning! ” It was the banana I bought yesterday, that was greeting me. I answered: “Good morning!” - “What are you doing?” - “As you can see, I go in the kitchen to make coffee.” - “What? Go? See? What are you tal...

[quote=""Jobar""]Take a year or so, and read the whole thing for yourself. Then come back and talk to us about "what is written."[/quote] One day, a friend gave me a Norwegian book: "Guds Lille Brun" (God's little brown). The title is to simulate Mao's Little ...

[quote=""DrZoidberg""]With the current theories both a finite and infinite universe violates the second law of thermodynamics. So clearly there's something else the universe can be.[/quote] Oh but I agree, DrZoidberg! I often irritate my friends by telling them that the answer to...

[quote=""DrZoidberg""]Doesn't eternal return involve the soul somehow?[/quote] Ah, I see what you mean, my friend! ;-) Well, I use the Cartesian "table rase" of forgetting everything I know. Then I ask myself: The universe? I imagine a googolplex of Planck's units of sp...

[quote=""DrZoidberg""]Nietzsche predates the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics.[/quote] Yes but ... what do you think about the idea that, if the universe is not created, it must be eternal and, therefore, what can happen, will happen? Of course, we ate talking about bil...

[quote=""DrZoidberg""]But Nietzsche was an atheist and a materialist. So we know that he didn't believe in either heaven or the eternal return.[/quote] I never read the book, DrZoidberg, but, from what I understand, Nietzsche thought that, if God doesn't exist, the universe was n...

[quote=""DrZoidberg""]I did all that, in spite of not being a humanists. I did't do it out of duty. [/quote] Oh, but if you had the impression that I meant, only self-proclaimed humanists can show empathy, sympathy and altruism, then I beg your pardon, I was far from thinking tha...

[quote=""DrZoidberg""]He he... well.. I'm not a humanist. To me humanism is the first wave of post Christian secularists.[/quote] okay... thank you for the link, talking about both Nietzsche and Marx, two people I try to understand. But then, it was a friend who called me first, ...

[quote=""DrZoidberg""]Well... That's nice. But you're still basically talking about mostly middle-class westerners. I hate to rain on your parade, but we don't matter that much. I see humanists as the people pointing as the ship goes down saying "I told you so. You should ha...