I am that by which you are noted.

A form of your name to which you are devoted.

Use me often to make yourself known,

In today’s society, a mark is not shown.

A monogram?

No, big monkey got it (I seriously think he uses that name to humiliate the riddler, you have to say, oh that? the monkey got that one)

*ahem* hugemonkey is the name my mother gave me

Some people's psychological makeup is such that they are not comfortable with doubt. If religion (which I insist has no intrinsic requirement to limit itself to dogma) can provide comfort to such people, and if science can make no promises that comfort them, then religion has a legitimate place.

Doubt can be scary (I guess) but is "comfort" a good enough reason to believe in something? To me this amounts to "believing in something because it makes you feel good" and is akin to hedonism. Life is full of suffering and doubt and one can either learn to relish it as it actually is "warts and all" or one can delude oneself.

What religion offers is a wider world than science alone can provide. Most of us live in a world of rich, vivid imagination and emotions, etc. These aspects of every human's life have little to do with reason. It's an interesting thought exercise to ask oneself why they take comfort in science. The "cold hard knife of reason" is not there to offer anyone any comfort at all. What is it that gives a person their sense of wholeness and well-being? Can anyone live a productive life in the complete absence of these things?

Knowing about religion and religious stories will enrich anyone's life and should be an integral part of anyone's cultural education. The same could be said for reading fiction, or simply imagining fantastical worlds. My grandmother used to say life is more fun if you have an imagination. That being said I know what is real and what is imagination. I would much rather face an ugly truth than chase a beautiful lie.

I agree with you entirely that stopping one's quest for truth is not the most enlightened way to live one's life. I suggest that this quest can include much more than just the quest for new (cold and impersonal) factual information through science.

I see it the other way around I see the practice of Religion as being and empty pursuit (although comforting to some) while Science provides a rich and nuanced understanding of the universe that is even more amazing because it is true. That is what fills me with awe and wonder.

But religion is not, by definition, restricted to a reliance on dogma. That is where modern Pantheism, Panentheism, Unitarian Universalism, and quite a few other modern religions come in. These religions reject dogma as vehemently as any atheist.

I respectfully disagree with that definition.

Point taken. I only meant the word "dogma" in a a very limited sense, but I know it has lots of other cultural baggage associated with it.

Responses above in blue. This is getting good

with humble hope it will take more then ONE GUESS to, well, guess

You look at me to read

Yet I am clear

(no rhyming on this one he he)

A teleprompter?

ur are tsuck in the iss too far from any walls so u cant push off and u can airswim because their is no ar(duh) how do u escape

(btw no one else is in the station)

(btw2 my first post in over a year w00t!)

No air inside of the space station? Very strange. So I assume that I am in a space suit otherwise I would be dead.

grab what ever I could from my pockets. Or at least tear off the patches on my space suit (I think these are usually velcroed on) and throw them in the opposite direction that I would like to travel. Action-reaction. I would float away from what ever I threw. If it is very light I would move very slowly but I would eventually get to a wall and then I could maneuver along the handles that are everywhere. I would eventually die from lack of oxygen since something has gone horribly wrong and the only air is in the space suit.

A basically ovular shape, of eyes and mind.

The first thing noticed of all mankind.

This is the place from which to commence.

The beginning of anything that sometime ends.

Apply these words together, right.

You’ll acquire an advantage, slight.

a head start

I am. And I suck. Too easy huh? I got to work on a better one. God job to you.

Don't be too hard on yourself. I have been looking for one for a while that is not yet solved. (Ha. I said "hard on".)

A truth, a dogma, commonly known.

A belief that’s based on me being shown.

a fact?

A computer (two numbers = 1 and 0)

I like what Octopuppy said about many possible futures. This fits in here:

If death by definition is a lack of experience.

And all possible things happen in the quantum universe.

If there is a situation where you would either live or die (lets say it is a 50/50 probability either way)

Then you would only experience the situation where you live.

Now imagine that the odds are 1,000,000 to 1 that you will die. That one in a million chance of you living is an extremely low probability and would represent an extremely unlikely event. It would represent the only possible future in which you would have any experience so that would be the path your consciousness would take. The odds could be even worse but the outcome would always be the same as long as there is just one chance in however many billions of possible outcomes that would be the one that you would experience.

Now before someone steps in front of a truck hoping that all of its atoms will decay at precisely the same moment remember that there could be many negative outcomes that would be slightly "better" than death (maimed, coma, etc.) so why risk it.

This sounds like Ontological argument for the existence of God.

It basically goes like this:

1. God is by definition a "Perfect Being".

2. A "Perfect Being" would have many attributes among which would be "existence".

3. Lack of existence would be an imperfection so by definition would not be an attribute of God.

4. So therefore God exists.

As with many logical fallacies, this one has more to do with the many specific meanings the words used, in this case the words "perfect" and "existence". I could go into this more but my posts tend to ramble.

To your original quote:

I think you break down at step 5. "A" still contains the qualification "IF" since A= '"IF A, then B". Basically you are saying "It is true if it is true." Which is, of course, a true statement.

Substitute the word "false".

"If this statement is false, then God exists."

It reminds me of the Discordian proverb : "All things are true, even false things."

There is no prohibition in language from saying nonsense or making illogical statements.

(See what I mean about rambling?)

What I am saying is that a *modern* religion doesn not have to be frozen into zealotry, fundamentalism, blind faith, etc. It can function on the same level as science and accept all that science has to offer.

Based on your previous posts I take it that you believe that there could be a modern religion that would embrace science and update itself when new scientific facts are discovered. If science has an area where it does not know something this could be temporarily explained by some kind of "spiritual" knowledge.

Why would you want to do this? There should feel no shame in accepting that there is some thing that is not yet understood. There is no reason to make up magical or spiritual reasons for some sort of mysterious phenomena. The problem with (religious) dogma is that it requires one to accept it without question. This is by definition, faith: accepting a belief without evidence. It is an excuse to stop thinking and stop questioning. I do not see how this is compatible with scientific thought which by definition is accepting a belief only after rigorous examination based on testable and repeatable evidence.

The argument that all religion must be based on dogma is specious. Just look at pantheism.

Dogma is, by definition, a religious belief or doctrine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogma

I was using it in quotes when referring to it in the scientific sense because there I meant it more metaphorically, as a belief or doctrine that is based on the scientific method. If by pantheism you mean more of the Spinozian sense of the word then, yes, you could be free of much of the dogma of Religion. Spinoza's pantheism is more of a metaphorical way of looking at the world and not truly a Religion. Its like using "God" as a synonym for "the universe". I use the term "Religion" to mean a certain type of established institution that has a belief system (based on dogma) and usually having some sort of associated moral code as opposed to just a belief system.

People get along just fine without any requirement to embrace dogma. Atheists are the ultimate example of that.

Yes, people can get along fine without dogma or Religion for that matter. Religions, by definition, cannot exist without dogma.

My responses above are in blue.

This comes to the heart of the matter. The law of parsimony (also called Occam's Razor, or Ockham's Razor), calls for us to accept the simplest explanation.

This is not a law but a useful logical tool. It is not infallibale. The simplest answer is not automatically true. It is just that the simplest answer is most likely to be true. Unlikely thing happen all of the time.

Placebos work. Keep that in mind. Scientific experiment has confirmed that.

Science has confirmed the existance of a placebo effect. There is a statistically significant improvement in human patients that receive placebos as opposed to those that receive nothing. This has more to do with human psychology than anything else. Our brain controls certain aspects of our immune system and it is more likely to help if it thinks that it is getting a real drug. There is not placebo effect when it comes to animals (lab rats and such) because they do not know that they are being treated.

"God" or an unknown "influence" with "supernatural" (really extra-natural) powers is often the simplest consistent explanation for issues not yet understood through reason, logic and science. It is consistent in that it is widely accepted, just as scientific results are.

Without the cultural baggage of religion I doubt that you would see God as the simplest answer. I try to resist the temptation that lack of understanding = supernatural. And again simple does not equal true.

Science does not accept absolute results, but always intends to revise its "belief structure" based on new evidence. There is no reason a modern religion cannot do the same. There is no reason that a modern religion cannot accept everything that science has uncovered and still have room for a favorite Placebo or extra-natural influence.

Science does not change its "belief structure"; it changes its "dogma". The [only belief structure of Science is that boarder understanding can be gained through limited observation and narrowly defined experimentation. This breaks questions down into a series of "if...then" statements that can be independently verified by anyone. The answers to these questions form a sort of "dogma." This "dogma" can change at any time if new evidence or interpretations arise. Religious belief systems are made entirely of dogma. Any ammendment proccess would change the belief structure itself and would be very risky in maintaining consistency through time

And there is not even any good reason to avoid making that extra-natural influence a personal one (anthropomorphizing one's god). In fact there are good reasons to give "god" a voice. People respond better to personal influence than to the cold, impersonal knife of reason.Just because you want something to be a certain way does not make it so. This seems more like a reason why "God" would have been invented than why it exists.

Will science ever completely erase all doubt on all matters? Most scientists will tell you "no". As "Darwin's Bulldog" T.H. Huxley put it:

"The known is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicabibilty. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land."

What's wrong with learning to swim?

It's fine to swim...but that is not the goal of science.

Can a reasoning person accept both sides of an open debate at once?

How can (s)he not?

I am not meaning to pick on you, seeksit, but I wasn't following this thread for a few days and your arguments were just too temping.

I myself believe that space and time are infinite. I don't see any reason for time to go away at all. And as far as space?

Well, I guess my little fourteen year old brain can't grasp itself around a space where there's less than nothing. Because in this sense, nothing is something, and... Christ, I don't know how to explain myself. I'm just trying to say that there can't be an end to nothing and all things simultaneously, because what would be on the other side of the end? Nothing? Something? In our universe at least, every Sq. mm. within it is filled with one or the other.

Current understanding of space-time is that the universe is extremely large but not infinite. However the "edge" is not a spacial boundary but one of time. Have you ever heard that when we look into space we are looking backward in time? This is because light takes time to get here. At a certain point of looking into deeper and deeper space we hit a wall of observation that is made up of microwave static. The static is (moments after) the big bang and can be seen as an edge of time. As far as a spacial "edge" there is none.

It helps to understand it if you mentally flatten some of the dimensions. Imagine that there are only two dimensions of space instead of three. the spacial dimensions of the universe woulds be like the surface of the sphere. if you were to travel on the surface you would eventually make a complete circle and wind up where you started. You would not perceive any edge.

What about looking at the problem from the other end.

Going forward in time is easy. Just sit back and let it happen. We are all moving forward in time. I guess the real trick wold be moving forward faster than everyone else. This is theoretically possible now if you were to move very fast in relation to the Earth so that time slowed down for you but outside of the Time Machine it moved normally.

Going Backward in time would be different and although I cannot describe how it could be achieved I can describe what it would look like.

Let's say that you were moving through space along a straight path in a time machine but you had not switched it on yet. You decide that you would like to switch it on and go back in time one minute. When you switch it on you would keep moving in the same direction but now you are traveling backward in time. You do this for one minute and then you switch it off and experience time normally always moving in a straight line from your point of view.

What would this look like to an outside observer?

1 minute before the moment that you activated the time machine there would be you in your time machine moving toward the point when (and where) you activated it. There would also be the future you just exiting the time travel mode but further along the line of travel.

At the moment of exiting the time travel mode an external observer would see the post-time-travel future you become two. One moving backwards and one moving forward. The original you would still be moving forward in space and time; still waiting to switch the time machine on. So now there are three of you; one moving forward in time toward the point of switching the machine on, one moving in the same direction but further along the line of travel having successfully time traveled; and one that has just appeared at the point of when the time machine was switched off to normal time moving backward in time (inside) but appearing to move backwards in and space to an outside observer. Th the observer it would be moving backwards toward the first you. At the moment that the time machine is switched on both you in the time machine and an outside observer would see you "crash" into the backward moving duplicate. If you in the time machine were to look behind you, you would see the original you moving backwards away from the now backward time traveling you as it retraced its steps. An outside observer would see both machines "crash" into each other and disappear. The post time travel you would still continue forward along the path looking backwards would see the same thing as a outside observer. As the one minute of time travel passes the time traveling you would see that post time travel you getting closer and closer moving backwards toward you until the moment that you turn the time travel switch off at that moment it would appear to disintegrate at the moment of impact. This is the same moment that I described earlier when the duplicate time machines appeared going in opposite directions except this time from the time traveler's perspective.

Anything that gets frozen in time and isn't allowed to evolve and adapt will eventually die. Islam declares that Muhammad was the last prophet, period. Christianity froze the accepted "canon" at the Council of Nicea in 325CE, no further changes permitted, period.

There is no fundamental reason why a religion has to become frozen in time. When some religion gets smart enough to adopt an "ammendment" process that can update their beliefs and sacred writings to keep up with the changing times, it will have a massive evolutionary advantage over other religions. I'm frankly amazed that such a religion hasn't arisen yet. Maybe it has something to do with the human craving for constancy and absolutism in a world that buffets us with too much change in our lives. People must be seeking a refuge from that change and turn to religion for that refuge.

Religious memes (meme - a transmittable idea) do change and mutate over time (when was the last time you attended a public stoning?) but this change tends to be very slow. This slowness is painfully obvious in the current era that is characterized by almost constant change.

Getting frozen in time does not necessarily mean that a meme will die especially if it already has a working formula. Most religions adopt a type of orthodoxy or conservatism only after their institutions are established and they have a foothold in the society in which they exist. Prior to that time they are almost alway seen as extremely radical, cult-like and even criminal when compared to the society as a whole.

This is sort of a chicken-and-egg phenomena because the orthodoxy or conservatism of religious memes is what makes them recognizable across continents and through time as a Religion. If a Religion were to adopt an amendment process that was too easy then it would quickly mutate into many factions. These would become their own Religions as what happened during the Protestant Reformation.

I think, also, in this debate about religion it is important to separate what is "true" from what is "useful". Most Religions are a mixed-bag of memes. Some memes are useful to society (a moral code for example) and will help a Religion spread. Some only exist to insure a type of fidelity in copying (anti-heresy and orthodoxy). Other religious memes seem to serve no other purpose but to insure that it is spread (mandatory prostylization, have as many children as possible). Having parts that "believers" insist are "true" also helps in this spread because people are more likely to believe something if they think it is true. Factual "Truth" is not necessary though. The fables and other tales the Greeks told had many moral and ethical lessons that "ring true" were useful for them to believe in order to maintain the social fabric, but it was not necessary to believe in talking foxes for you to accept the truth of the underlying moral message.

One way to get people to buy into a bundle of religious memes is to wrap them up in an amazing story. It makes no difference if the story is true only that it is amazing enough for people to repeat it. In fact the wackier it is the more likely it is to get repeated. Throw in a few moral interpretations of the story that "ring true" or at least make everyone feel good, and suppress alternative explanations. Then you can pretty much throw in any amount of mumbo-jumbo with memes that undercut logic and criticism like "faith". Add in some taboos about arguing about religion as being rude. Then you've got everything that is needed to not only keep your religion going but the entire concept that "religion is good".

What good is it? Is it useful and/or necessary to believe a lie in order to have a stable society? Is there any alternative? Would you be more or less ethical to behave in a certain way that is useful and productive if no cohersion or religious code was making you?

fair/fare?

1. horse/hoarse

2. peddle/petal

3. gorilla/guerilla

4. heel/heal

5. ?

6. in/inn

7. capitol/capital

8. chili/chilly

9. close/clothes

10. mustered/mustard

Short Answer: maybe.

Longer Answer: Most likely not.

Really Long Answer: I consider myself an atheist ... that is no god, no magic, no ghosts, no ESP, no miracles, when you die you rot in the ground, etc. and the world seems a lot simpler at first. Then as you get to know more about the way things work and you realize that not only is the "real world" (read: "science") more interesting, complex, and awesome that you originally thought but it is more interesting, complex and unusual that any religion ever predicted. That's it for me. I don't know everything and neither does anyone or anything; but what I do know is enough for me to be satisfied with the universe (through my understanding of science) for the rest of my life.

Weird Answer: I have more than a partial understanding of Quantum Physics. One thing that it teaches is that our universe is constantly splitting into "parallel universes" to cover every possible future outcome of a random event. It also implies there are many possible pasts where "parallel universes" converge, that could have lead to this exact moment in time. Some of these could be from universes that have no set physical properties (magic is possible, for example). However, I consider the probability of this to be so low* that it not worth considering.

steps off of soap box, looks around, no one is listening

Hey, isn't this site supposed to be about brain teasers and such!?

*because you would have to account for the fact that continuity in such a universe with no set rules would be nearly impossible to perceive.

...has one surface.

If you cut it in half, each half would have 2 surfaces. This is topologically similar to a disk, a cone, or any two dimensional shape cut out of a piece of paper.

Cut the 1/2 sphere in half again (1/4 sphere) and you have 3 surfaces, this would be also topologically similar to a cylinder. This one is a stretch but think of a cylinder that has the top and bottom circles are cut at an angle so that they touch. This is what I mean by topologically similar.

Cut the 1/4 sphere in half (1/8 sphere) this would be topologically similar to a tetrahedron or Platonic pyramid with 4 triangular sides.

Cut one corner off of the 1/8 sphere and you would have a five sided object that is topologically similar to triangular prism.

i checked on MS word: 'obit' doesn't come up as a spelling error but 'lite' does

Do not rely on MS Word . Lite is the word for a single pane of glass in a window.

I think therefore I am.

The chair doesn't think therefore it isn't.

AVI or AWA

they are US postal codes

for TN (Tennessee), TX (Texas), UT (Utah), VT (Vermont), V(A for Virginia), and the last two letters are either VI for the Virgin Islands or WA for Washington (if you are only counting states.)

I thought some thing looked familiar

So true.

V

Too wise you are.

Too wise you be.

I see you are,

Too wise for me!