Mrhnhrm

Yes it is, this guy should learn to call a spade a spade. And yes, vitamins only do their job in the organism when bonded to certain proteins. The problem is that these proteins may differ from species to species, and your digestive system has no choice but to break down vitamin-protein complexes present in food until only individual aminoacids and vitamins remain. You just can't absorb anything else into the bloodstream and lymph. Your system will then rebuild what it needs from what it has. You shouldn't trust a guy who calls himself a doctor and doesn't know that.

And exactly what differs the atoms and molecules found in grown organisms from those isolated elsewhere? And do you really do the exercises necessary to deal with all the calories that would come along with the necessary amounts of vitamins in natural package?

Throughout the major part of their evolution humans relied on a certain composition of nutrients: of particular interest here are vitamins, minerals and calories. Back in those boring days our long-forgotten ancestors were spending a lot of time (and energy) to get on with their lives - search for food and escaping predators were much more demanding than what we're used to. And the food that early humans consumed (basically just what can be found in the wilderness) was not particularly rich in energy, so they had to consume a lot. Unwittingly, with it all they also consumed the required doses of those compounds that we call vitamins and minerals. When civilization brought the gift of easily produced food and all sorts of mechanisms to make life easier, humans simultaneously lost the need to consume as much calories as before and gained access to crops that are rich in energy but not so much in the vitamin and mineral department. And your body still needs as much of them every day as in those uncivilized days to be at peak performance. So, take your vitamins.

Basically anything that plants produce as seeds is pretty rich in protein: beans, nuts, whole grain, cereals. Although plant protein is somewhat difficult for gut to process completely and it's not the best imaginable amino-acid composition for humans, but you can survive on it. Meat, dairy products and eggs are better balanced.

What do you hold as the meaning of your life?Given no knowledge of what's going to be after the end, or what eventually becomes of your achievements in this sick society, it's a safe bet to say that life has no practical meaning. The way I see it, you're just going around doing stuff you're most used to. Doing stuff that you are actually good at or learning how to do something well sure feels satisfactory. So, I guess that if there's something resembling the meaning of it all, it's the never ending race after serotonin or whatever it is in your bloodstream that gives you a feeling of fulfilment. Also the desire that no one consumes your share of oxygen. What is the reason you wake up every morning?An alarm clock, of course. Also the fact that staying in bed is sorta boring. What makes you want to be alive a week from now?There is a decent chance that plans for the next day are going to be derailed somehow, and you want me to plan for the next week? Sure, I make far-reaching plans now and then, but they may work out fine, and may just as well not. I don't give it too much concern, I just carry on. What, if taken away, would render your life unbearable?Whatever it is that allows me to do what I'm most used to and what I'm proficient with. What, if given to you, would render your life worth living?There's no such thing. If it was a world where you can be sure that you'll get the desired result proportional to the applied effort knowing that no one or nothing is going to get in the way, then everything would be worthwhile. With the world organised the way it is, I think that the most guaranteed fulfilling thing I could do is to press a 'destroy the entire world' button if there is one and give evolution another chance. Do you even value your own life?An interesting question. On the absolute scale, I value my life pretty low. I don't think I'd be upset if I learnt that I'm going to die soon due to some unfixable reason. And I suppose I'd be glad to give my life for something. But here's the problem: when the same value is put onto the relative scale, I don't know of a single damn thing actually worthy of what little my existence means. I would consider joining an army to fight space invaders when they arrive, but a part of me is still sure that someone will find a way of turning even such sort of war into the means of personal gain.

Actually, what's no less important, science is kinda useful. But if you wish to dissect the definitions, one would naturally want to know what usefulness is. Well, I think that the definition of religion is very closely linked to the definition of faith. Yes, I choose to separate them. Faith is whatever you can not put to test by experiment. A lot of things fall into this category: morality, aesthetic criteria, human values and priorities. Even if you reflect upon how e.g. a shift in artistic tastes affects the society, you still judge it by subjective arbitrary criteria (even if they are shared by many). Then comes religion. This is a special flavour of faith that compels to do things that are effectively a waste of time and resources which could otherwise be used elsewhere and give the desired result in a more cost-effective manner. For example, Ramadan fasting serves no practical purpose other than wearing out potential labourers. -=-=-=-=- You are confusing uncritical reading for history. Oh really? Would you be so kind as to provide a prooflink? The search engines are useless when searching for the two letters 'pm', and 'private' finds nothing. But a brief look through the first half a dozen pages of this thread suggests that arguments have been going here since the beginning, and it's not like the thread author minded. So, unless I break the forum rules or someone can explain why this specific argument should be taken down while all the prior ones remain, I will say whatever I see fit here and I refuse to leave the comforts of this public discussion.

And how things were different when there was no Internet? Faulty information and the ignorant ones didn't appear on the 'net out of nowhere. It's actually the most ironic invention. It has severely hampered natural selection within the human population, effectively making it to become weaker with every generation, ever increasing the cost of all sorts of health-related problems for society. Not to mention people just having to live with these problems.

Oh, you flatter me so. And exactly what makes my arguments any pettier than any others? Who's cherry-picking now? And here I was hoping that mentioning the problem of scientific validity could get you to somehow consider this subject, but... so much for hoping. Why should a recorded event be trusted? You were not there when it happened. As soon as no eye witnesses of an event remain, there is no way of ensuring authenticity of any document describing it! And you don't have to go far to find examples of data manipulations in writing: I've already mentioned Paul's interpretation of God's promises to Abraham. And science effectively goes in such a way as that unless something is reliably proven, you can't put any conclusions from it to use. As far as written evidence goes, history is just a bunch of tales, some of which give a more consistent impression than others, but the true course of events is pretty much lost forever. And to choose a sole writing as grounds for saying that something happened? You insist on imagining things. I never said that any dating is wrong, I was only trying to tell you what's behind the things that get crammed down your sensory organs, things that you accept as facts. And if you actually paid any attention to what I've been writing, you would have noticed that I expressed my position on why those dates can be very well questioned. It's your turn to provide some references in your defence. It doesn't become something else if you call it something different. 'Wishful thinking' is another good term. You were willing to give more validity to a piece of evidence for an event simply because someone was known to cause similar events, which is still faulty. It's not any better than a statement that the same piece of evidence should be considered less valid because there is no official record for the same event despite the officials' habit of recording everything. In fact, the latter position would be more acceptable in scientific context since doubt regarding a researcher's position always works against him. Why should I leave this thread? And why should you? You can hardly embarrass yourself any further than calling what I do by inappropriate terms when at lack for better words.

So, exactly what it says on the tin. Discuss! I think it's nuclear bomb. The thing that put an end to large-scale military conflicts occurring every generation or so. And also played an important role in development of nuclear reactors. Which give most energy per unit of capital cost and of harm to nature yet (maybe with the exception of hydroelectric power).

Logic is logic, whether you like it or not. It's not my fault that the book contradicts itself, anyone who is meticulous enough will find those contradictions; I'm by no means the first one to try, and some even went as far as to publish their findings for all to see (just that you might have something to fall back to if you somehow choose to disregard what I say). Why do you avoid the logical approach so much? Science (pretty much based on logic) has given you food which is produced without the need to mess around in mud for a significant part of your working time, it has given medications without which some of your close ancestors might not even have been born, it has given you a device to instantly communicate with any place on the planet. What can uncritical acceptance of religion boast, other than many religious wars and extracting billions of dollars that are exempt from taxation? Argumentum ad populum? If you don't care where do statements that you believe come from and whether they are worth reflecting upon, it very likely means that you don't understand what you believe in (and apparently, nor do you even want to); at very least, no evidence for the contrary is given. Besides, I was asking pretty much rhetorical questions in my previous message - that's the condition of historicism regarding this very issue that I've been able to come up with. If you possess any different information that could shed some further light here, I humbly ask to provide the references. And how does history work? In fact, how does any science work? Have you heard of problems related to reliability of evidence, to scientific errors and statistics? When you have only one piece of evidence (especially coming from such a mess of information that the Bible is), you're firing without aiming when making far-going conclusions based on it. That's why experiments are supposed to be repeated several times to minimise the effect of random errors, and several different historical accounts are to be processed before writing any theories down. This is especially true for history, where you obviously can not verify a theory by experiment. A deduction fallacy. The fact that a person is known for doing something repeatedly does not necessarily mean that any rumour of them doing the same thing again is true. Excellent. You've taken the first vague idea that had come to mind in an attempt to somehow prove me wrong. Instead of actually searching for closer matches of my clauses. Way to go. Try John 3:16, 1 John 4:7-8, then Isaiah 45:7, Ecclesiastes 3. Then, assuming that all those are true, again consider God's involvement in the Massacre and what his love is like. Joseph's involvement is up to debate at the same scale as is the meaning of 'seed'. And Mary's lineage is not explicitly given in the Bible. If you want to retaliate with a common belief that Luke 3:23-and-on is Mary's genealogy, I have to disappoint you: she is never mentioned in the chapter, in fact it's stated in no ambiguous terms that the provided lineage is Joseph's. See, a common interpretation is that if Luke's version is somewhat different from Mathew's one, the former inevitably has to relate Mary's lineage. How much sense does that make? Maybe. But as far as your statements go to this point, so do you. If you really feel that you're more in the right to judge others' knowledge than any John Doe, learn how to use Google at least (like I do).

And what exactly is the chain of calculations that leads to this date of Jesus' birth? There exist no direct indications for when it occurred. Herod's death is a different matter, with him being an important figure and all, evidently some records remained that allow to date his passing quite conclusively. So, did everyone choose the easy way and just decided to attribute Jesus' birth to a date that doesn't contradict with Mathew's description of the Massacre? There are two curious things to consider then. One is that no direct evidence of the Bethlehem Massacre exists; in fact, the only indication that it happened is in Mathew's Gospel. Seeing as many other acts of mass violence done by Herod were actually properly recorded, this raises some doubts whether the Massacre happened at all. The other thing being: from where do you think came the idea that the line between 1BC and 1AD should be drawn exactly where it is now? Courtesy of a monk named Dionysius Exiguus who just took the liberty to state that the year when he invented the AD dating system (a date quite accurately attributed to consulship of a certain Roman politician) was 525th since Christ's incarnation. The important thing is not whether it is nice. It's about what sort of implications it raises about consistency of the text and of what preachers attempt to teach. In case you didn't know, there is such a thing called logic. E.g. it's written that God loves humanity dearly. It is also at least once explicitly stated in the Bible that everything that happens does so by God's will. Then there is the record of the Bethlehem Massacre. That the dearly loving god willed to happen. I'm not sure what kind of strange love is that, but it's not something I'd like for myself. I don't have time for interpretations. Why should I care for them when there are factual fallacies? For example, Galatians 3:16 states "The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say "and to seeds," meaning many people, but "and to your seed," meaning one person, who is Christ." Where exactly such thing is told in the Old Testament? Don't bother seeking, it's just Paul's imagination gone wild. Besides, Christ is by no means Abraham's seed. Even if Joseph is indeed direct descendant of Abraham, Jesus is technically not Joseph's son. If someone believes that it's acceptable to build a belief system on something as inconsistent as this book, it's their own business. However, some people would be in their right to regard such a teaching as an insult to their sentience. Somewhere between these two extremes are those who doubt and will accept Bible if given some sort of explanation for the most obvious quirks. But you can't fix the flaws of the book themselves. And none of the possible interpretations of these flaws are going to be inherently flawless or true themselves.

Beg your pardon, why is Equestria necessarily a paradise? If we were never shown that there are social and political problems just like on Earth, it doesn't mean that there actually are none of them. Do you know the anecdote about the difference between tourism and immigration? And I wish that Universe fast-forwards to the next Big Bang. Maybe next time the being will have better luck with making lifeforms that are more worthy of existence. Well, simply destroying the Earth's biosphere is also acceptable. Aren't you afraid of ending up effectively imprisoned in some sort of a secret laboratory where all sorts of sciencey stuff will be performed on you?

Christianity relies on the complete Bible. The New Testament often refers to and occasionally misinterprets what's been said in the Old one. So, you just have to accept this first half of the book for what it is. Besides, even the New Testament is by no means a kind story of magical unicorns and cotton candy clouds, metaphorically speaking. E.g. how about Herod's completely unreasonable slaughter of innocent infants in Bethlehem that the all-loving god didn't do a hand's turn to prevent? Of course, this completely overlooks that if you put what historians and church officials say together, it turns out that Herod had been already dead for 3 or 4 years at the time of Jesus' birth. Such approach would make sense if we read a book of fiction. However, we're dealing with a product of what's supposed to be divine revelation and depiction of historical events, not to mention it de facto being a basis for what many people define their lives by. If there is no logic in any given part of the document, there's no way that the entire document is going to become logically sound once you're done with it cover to cover. Take scientific publications for comparison - each one is a relatively short self-contained declaration of facts that make sense and can useful on their own. And arising contradictions are eventually dismissed as previous mistakes. But no, in case of Bible you need to rely on dozens of interpretations to tie the obvious loose ends together by inventing new assumptions on the go, without even usually concerning yourself about whether any of them are correct. But do you believe that what your religion says about what's going to come after your physical death? Is there any way of knowing that it's like what they describe? What if in reality it happens the other way around and good deeds here only earn you damnation, and there are just nobody who could return to warn about this?

It's not like atheists hugely outnumber the non-atheists for their position on good/evil to make such a significant difference. And the world has pretty much been screwed over since humans invented pointy sticks. Much of the reason for this being that all people have their belief in good/evil. It's just that the views of morality don't quite match for different people, which tends to cause problems. Which brings a good point to consider: where do your definitions of what's acceptable and what is not come from? Mostly depends on which part of the Bible you read. The Old Testament is chock full of detailed descriptions for different acts of violence, betrayal and otherwise questionable activities. Usually committed in the name or by will of God. Makes it kinda understandable why Jesus was executed for having annoyed the church officials by preaching love and forgiveness. Not just some, it's in the Bible. "But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.” - Revelation 21:8.

Black Sabbath Iron Maiden Ozzy Dio Deep Purple And Ronnie is the best Black Sabbath vocalist. Period.

Yep, a bad joke on my part. But raises an important point for potential *NIX wannabes: know the difference between # rm -rf /* and # rm -rf ./*Also, don't run any commands you're unsure about when you see that # at the prompt. In fact, use a separate user account for questionable stuff.

While the whole concept of god seems like not provable and not deniable, I prefer to classify myself as an atheist for opposing religion as such. For it containing too many inner contradictions and usually turning out counterproductive for society.

Getting a built one saves you time and can earn you some extra warranty duration. But there's a strange pleasure in playing around with the components and the screwdriver. A good opportunity to learn a thing or two about this technology as well. Knowledge is invaluable when it comes to computers, buys you time and makes you free

Linux. No, I can't emphasise enough on it, LINUX. I've had it enough with Microsoft using its end users as paid beta-testers (in the sense that YOU have to pay them to beta-test their abominations). And as if that wasn't enough, they keep changing everything of what actually used to work from version to version. The interface of 7 is a wreck, and I can't share a network connection unless I pay for a super-duper version of this so called OS? And don't get me started at how I tried to get a somewhat antiquated wireless card working in it (not surprisingly, to no avail). I'm not much of a gamer, so I have little reasons not to damn it to hell. Actually, what little I play runs just fine in Linux under Wine or other emulator-like programs. And there's an important news for you, gamers: Gabe Newell stated that they'd be porting their stuff to Linux 'cause Windows 8 is a 'catastrophe'. I think I'll just trust him. So, you'd better start learning the magic of CLI like # rm -rf /* , you're gonna need it Never had an experience with a mac. But from what people say, no matter which OS you use, once you try doing something that isn't expected from ~ 90 % of all users (basically, you try something other than what the OS gets shipped with), you can't expect everything to work properly. So, I choose Linux as the best of the abominations for its seemingly endless security, flexibility and customisability.

I believe that it would be worthy of appreciation if you don't tell people what to be and what to be not simply because you don't like something. And I'd much rather be a smarty pants than a dumby pants. And I'm also afraid that I might not get a chance to visit a Black Sabbath performance.

I'm somewhat a beer geek. Which is a trouble for someone living in the seemingly most un-beerey country of those which are known for their drinking habits. So I can only choose out of what little gets shipped to these parts. I most love IPA (although I've yet to try an actually decent brew. I think it'd be a cool idea to jack it up to produce a poor man's equivalent of double IPA. Heat Death of the Universe is likely to occur quicker than any of the actual stuff getting shipped here) Porter (St.Peter's Old Style) Bitter (Young's London Ale, St.Peter's Best Bitter - NOT the organic variety!) Czech pilsener (Budweiser Budvar, Gambrinus) German pils (Jever) Dry stout (Guinness Draught) Belgian wheat beer (Hoegaarden) Weizendunkel (Franziskaner, Erdinger) I don't really like vodka (I'm a wrong Russian). When it comes to strong booze, I prefer brandy.

I honestly don't envy you, and can only pity you. Because, you know, pretty much everything can kill you. E.g. a collar of your garment is a perfect strangling implement, or anything that you eat can happen to obstruct your windpipe. Oh the more you know...

Guys, what's the big deal about dying? Being afraid of living seems like a more appropriate thing to do, and I doubt that many people do that. Personally I'm afraid of screwing stuff up in the end after giving a lot of effort. People interrupting me when I'm working with power tools or chemicals makes me jumpy. Somewhat afraid of heights, but would love to go parachuting. And just two words: public embarrassment. I've found something personally for you, I'll just leave it here http://favim.com/image/37240/