Persecution (Dec 2)

[Deckard Canine]

Anyone here seen K-PAX? Now there's a clumsy handling of FTL. When Prot is challenged on how he can defy Einstein's theory by traveling faster than light, he says, "You're reading too much into Einstein." He points out that Einstein said nothing could accelerate from less than the speed of light to more, but that left open the possibility of particles that already travel faster than light, a.k.a. tachyons.

...Which still didn't explain how he, who was plainly not a set of tachyons at the moment, could travel faster than light. You fail, Prot.

[Detrius]

But don't limit yourself either. I agree we need to stop waiting for that to happen, but you should always keep your next move in mind.

Well, what is our next move then? I think establishing a foothold in our "coastal waters" (Earth orbit and moon) would be a good start. Developing some kind of FTL drive for that task might be a bit of overkill.

[Setesh]

I do hope that you realize that the seperation of Church and State is a method of managing the tension between two clauses of the 1st amendment (the free exercise clause and the no established religion clause). It is not the only method possible and the doctrine does not rise to the level of deference that the actual text should elicit. We're not going to get very far if we can't agree on what's at stake. If there's a tension between the separation of Church and State doctrine and the 1st amendment, the 1st amendment should trump every time.

No it shouldn't or the seperation is meaningless. If the first amendment can overide the seperation at any time it makes it null and void. Finding the balance between the free expression of the individual and avoiding government support of one expression over anouther is the whole point. If the 1st wins everytime then every belief should be supported equally, but they aren't. American government has a strong christian bias.

[Axelgear]

Actually, there is another reason for FTL besides colonization: Visiting other stars and worlds.

Anyone familiar with the Drake Equation knows there must be intelligent life out there. Imagine a probe that can travel at, say, CPS (A Lightyear per second) jumps to a chain of potentially inhabited star systems, deploys information gathering probes, and jumps off, then waits for approximately a year, then jumps back and collects each data gatherer.

Now why would we do this, pray tell? Well, for one, we need to know if we're alone or not. It's a human compulsion and instinct. We HAVE to know. Another reason is that we may find alien tech has a lot to offer. Yet more reasons suggest we can go between stars and establish friendly relations with another species. That alone would be worth all the money in the space program.

And, as to the idea of it being overkill, it depends on price. If I could get to Mars and back safely in under a second, I'd definitely do it. As soon as it becomes safe and quick to visit the red planet, it happens in earnest. Mining companies develop tech and set up shop. But miners have families, and so recreational facilities are built. Families have children, and children need schools, doctors...

You see where I'm going with this, right?

[Brannick]

While FTL is great and wonderful and I'm certainly all for it no matter what flavor it comes in, what we need is an inexpensive way to lift items out of the gravity well we live in.

Suffering correction for exactness, it currently costs NASA something on the order of $2,000-$5,000 per pound to boost something into Low Earth Orbit. For guys and gals like us to get involved that number has to come down a LOT. Find a way to get a toe into space on the cheep and the rest is gravy.

In the 'conquest of the West' days of the US, countless thousands went West on the chance of a better life. The need of humanity to see what's over the horizon is still there. But unlike the pioneers, even if we sell our homes and pack up just what will fit in a conastoga wagon, the cost to put it into LEO is beyond us.

Make that cost low and humanity will go.

[MikeVanPelt]

Anyone familiar with the Drake Equation knows there must be intelligent life out there.

Not exactly. Most of the terms are complete unknowns. "Percentage of stars that have planets" we're starting to get a handle on, but "percentage of planets which are capable of supporting life" is currently purely speculative. (Given how many stars have close-in gas giants, it may be pretty low.) The book "Rare Earth" gives pretty good arguments why planets that have life-friendly conditions for geological time periods may be exceptionally rare.

(My bias: I really want there to be lots of interesting aliens out there, and I really want to be able to find out about them. I think there probably are lots of alien civilizations out there, but, alas, I expect I'll never get the chance to visit, or even read about them in National Geographic.)

[Axelgear]

Close Gas Giants would not be a disqualifier, just an inhibitor. The Drake Equation on what we can count best indicates around one in one hundred to one thousand worlds should have intelligent life.

Still, even that is just a guess...

[Xellas]

First off, please forgive me if I reiterate anything said. Due to time constraints (ironically, I'm working on a take-home final for my Bible college course) I could only read up to page 5 before making this reply.

Since i'm a fairly new face around here, I'll just say a few things about myself. Yes, I'm a firm believer in Christianity. I'm a white male, liberal in beliefs and centrist in political affiliation. I'm not totally ignorant about other religions, but I've chosen Christianity because I love the person of Christ and wish to follow Him. No, I don't believe that He'd be proud of the church nowadays, because on the large we're a grabbag of apathetic slackers or complete nutjobs, with rational, well-grounded believers being few and far between.

No, I do not believe Christianity in the USA is being persecuted. Nobody in their right mind can claim that it's not being persecuted in other countries, but here it's rather nice and secure. However, I have personally been on the brunt end of some rather... nasty attacks on my person (verbally only so far) due to my faith. Mostly from people who know NOTHING of me. I'm the first person to get up there and want to bash anti-abortion protesters over the head with their own pickets. I'm the first to decry anti-gay legislation, and any sort of religiously slanted legislation in general. In general, I like to keep religion out of my politics and politics out of my religion.

As for the current anti-Christianty trend that seems to be sprouting up... I believe that part of it is just a natural reaction to christianity having been in power so long, and part of it is because the most vocal segment of Christians are zealots and morons. Unfortunately, the media likes ratings, and seeing nice, sane people who have a rationally grounded faith tends to be rather boring to the average person. It's much more amusing to watch something that shocks and outrages us, so the media naturally focuses on that so that the people will watch them, since they obviously cannot cover everything that ever happens. This casts Christianity into a much worse light than it tends to be.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying there aren't bad christians. Good GOD, I know there are. One look at the Catholic church is enough to prove that. In fact, in general I'd say that while Christianity is the best religion, we generally have the worst followers, mostly because it became the 'in' religion.

While RHJ might have a few points, in general I don't think that Christianty is suffering anything that, on the surface at least, it doesn't deserve. The problem I have with this is that every Christian is being painted with the brush of the worst of our kinds. When I say that I'm a Christian, people who don't even know me assume that I'm an anti-abortion, gay-hating nutjob who believes that the earth was created in 7 days and that evolution doesn't exist. None of that is true about me... I'm pro-choice and neutral when it comes to homosexuals so long as they respect my choice to tell them no if they hit on me.

To me, that's the true crime here... if I walked up to a muslim and immediately assumed that he was a wife-beating, Christian-killing mass murderer, I'd be tarred and feathered publically for that. I'm expected to try to get to know those of other faiths before judging them, yet they are not faulted when they do not extend the same courtesy to me, which to me seems just as wrong as anything that Christianity is accused of.

[Axelgear]

To me, that's the true crime here... if I walked up to a muslim and immediately assumed that he was a wife-beating, Christian-killing mass murderer, I'd be tarred and feathered publically for that. I'm expected to try to get to know those of other faiths before judging them, yet they are not faulted when they do not extend the same courtesy to me, which to me seems just as wrong as anything that Christianity is accused of.

That's actually exactly what I think the majority of the people here agree on. This is known as Reverse National-Centrism (Formerly Reverse Racism but it happens to more than just races), and it's basically where people are able to insult others because they are white and/or Christian. Basically, it's just a case where people go beyond the bonds of reason. I.E. Having minority scholarships in equal amount to open scholarships, allowing minorities to use racist terms, and so on.

A cure for this is called common sense but it's in short supply these days.

[TMLutas]

I do hope that you realize that the seperation of Church and State is a method of managing the tension between two clauses of the 1st amendment (the free exercise clause and the no established religion clause). It is not the only method possible and the doctrine does not rise to the level of deference that the actual text should elicit. We're not going to get very far if we can't agree on what's at stake. If there's a tension between the separation of Church and State doctrine and the 1st amendment, the 1st amendment should trump every time.

No it shouldn't or the seperation is meaningless. If the first amendment can overide the seperation at any time it makes it null and void. Finding the balance between the free expression of the individual and avoiding government support of one expression over anouther is the whole point. If the 1st wins everytime then every belief should be supported equally, but they aren't. American government has a strong christian bias.

Ok, let's try one more time. Separation of Church and state is a method (not the only one but a legitimate one) to enforce the 1st amendment. If it is coming into tension with the 1st amendment then it's worthless as an enforcement mechanism and there's something else sneaking in under false colors.

[Axelgear]

Hmm... Not sure which of you I'm agreeing with here; not that my view blends between you, I just can't quite tell which view you're arguing for.

Whichever of you is arguing that religious bias and state religion are bad things to have in politics, I'm for them. I think that's you, TM, but I'm not sure...

[Tom Mazanec]

If FTL is possible, than we are alone in the universe. It is the nature of life to expand as far as it can. FTL makes the Fermi Paradox come down to we are alone.

[Xellas]

First off, FTL by any commonly applied physics is impossible. You run into an exponentially increasing requirement for reaction mass and/or energy as you approach the C barrier, owing to E=MC^2. Kinetic energy is energy as well, and as you increase kinetic energy the mass slowly begins to creep upwards, but that accelerates the closer you get to that C barrier, requiring more energy, which amplifies the mass required. Needless to say it hits numbers that you might as well call 'infinity' very quickly.

Secondly, even if FTL is possible, it does NOT invalidate the Fermi Paradox. Suppose that you can manage FTL speeds, but only up to 10xC. A trip to the nearest star system from us would be 3 months long! A trip across the galaxy would still be hundreds of years long, and getting to the next galaxy out would be hundreds of thousands of years off. Just because you can break that old C barrier doesn't mean that the universe becomes a SMALL place.


As for the comment on common sense, yes that's in very short supply these days. People seem to think that if they scream loud enough at each other they no longer have to be rational. Someday I'll find a stick big enough that I can whack this stupid idea right outta their heads.

[Tom Mazanec]

As for the comment on common sense, yes that's in very short supply these days. People seem to think that if they scream loud enough at each other they no longer have to be rational. Someday I'll find a stick big enough that I can whack this stupid idea right outta their heads.

But the stick hurts, which gets them more angry and more inclined to shout. Then you need a bigger stick. This continues in an infinite loop, so a stick has to be infinitely large to do the job. Thus a stick "big enough to whack this stupid idea right outta their heads" is impossible by the laws of physics.

[Xellas]

But the stick hurts, which gets them more angry and more inclined to shout. Then you need a bigger stick. This continues in an infinite loop, so a stick has to be infinitely large to do the job. Thus a stick "big enough to whack this stupid idea right outta their heads" is impossible by the laws of physics.

Naa, they stop shouting once I hit them hard enough to render them unconcious. At which point I inform the paramedics to be sure to include a gag for them, and a possible removal of their tongue.

[Timtitan]

Just a note
FTL Travel is impossible under currently established physical laws (Newton + Einstein). However there are a few theorists working on that topic.

I like Quantum Gravity Myself

[Xellas]

Hmm. Explain how that would be employed for FTL travel please. I'm an off and on astrophysics reader, and while I've heard quantum gravity mentioned, it's always been 'That force we haven't quite figured out yet'. Not "Solution to the holy grail of travel".

Not saying its impossible, i'm just saying please explain the concept for those of us who haven't been keeping up with the science theories recently

[Aurrin]

If FTL is possible, than we are alone in the universe. It is the nature of life to expand as far as it can. FTL makes the Fermi Paradox come down to we are alone.

Perhaps, and perhaps not. Basic life (as we understand it) does. But if we rule out FTL-enabled space jellyfish, then it's a fairly reasonable assumption that FTL requires intelligence. Intelligence can often override basic natures. A good example is when China withdrew and became xenophobic during the critical times of first meeting with the European explorers back in the 15th, 16th & 17th centuries. Aliens may simply not care about going out beyond their planet. Why should we assume that they're as preoccupied as we are about being alone as a species? Or maybe they aren't alone on their world, and so they never really think about it. Or they may have some other concerns that always trump it. (Fiscal year budget, anyone?)

In short, it's not necessarily a sound assumption that they'd come looking for us, nor even that they'd find us if they did.

[Axelgear]

If FTL is possible, than we are alone in the universe. It is the nature of life to expand as far as it can. FTL makes the Fermi Paradox come down to we are alone.

Not necessarily true. Often times, people who believe Aliens have already landed and such state that they do not make formal contact because humans are not "ready" yet, and this is a probable reason even if they haven't made contact. We have not reached a point of technological and social development that would allow us into the Universal Field.

[Setesh]

Ok, let's try one more time. Separation of Church and state is a method (not the only one but a legitimate one) to enforce the 1st amendment. If it is coming into tension with the 1st amendment then it's worthless as an enforcement mechanism and there's something else sneaking in under false colors.

To quote the big yellow bird 'wark?' Your saying that a section of the first amendment meant to define how its applied should be thrown out because it doesn't work perfectly. Basic problem here, nothing is perfect. The freedom of religeon vs. church/state seperation is a line that is fuzzy, it both must and should be applied via carefull consideration. That the loudest of the dumb on both sides want sweeping pronouncments that they are right is the source of the problem.

You've (twice) defined the problem (which we already knew) and have made some comments about chucking the lot. Good luck with that cause this is still the best system we have. Anything 'better' that has come along requires something we haven't done yet, grow a better human.