The suppositions in my second argument are fatal to your theory because it is necessary to show those suppositions are false in order for your theory to stand. Or, to be more specific, in order to prove that evolution theory contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, it is necessary to show that the temporary reduction of entropy in living things is not paid for by an even greater increase in entropy elsewhere.

When human beings build a skyscraper, do they violate the second law of thermodynamics? After all, they are creating order in a place that was previously disordered. The answer, of course, is no. The order in the skyscraper is more than paid for by the burning of fossil fuels and other orderly sources of energy that it took to build it.

You're engaging in a fundamental misapplication of the second law of thermodynamics. My physics text states the law as follows: "A natural process always takes place in a such a direction as to cause an increase in the entropy of the system plus environment." The second law of thermodynamics does not say that living things must become more disordered over time. It does say that living things plus their environment must do so.

It seems to me that a god that was capable of admitting people to an afterlife would certainly know whether any last-minute redemptions were sincere.

So you're saying that Israelis deserve to die because Jews believe that God once did bad things to Egyptians?

I thought it was 42.

"The fact is that based on what I read the Barak/Arafat peace agreement failed because of two items that neither one of them could agree on. Right of return and Jerusalem."

If that is true then all this baloney about occupation and Israelis killing caged Palestinians for "generations" is just a smoke screen. The real reason for the suicide bombings is that the Palestinians couldn't get the right of return, plus whatever it was they wanted in Jerusalem.

If you take the Bible literally (which I don't), God killed some Egyptian children, as I recall. What does that have to do with the subject under discussion?

The quotes you have provided from the guided ones Web site are long on opinions and short on facts. That it is an Israeli who disagrees with his government's policy does not alter that fact, and indeed only proves that Israel has freedom of speech. If someone quoted a Palestinian who disagrees with the suicide bombings, should people accept that as truth as well?

He did not say that the Palestinians are just Arabs.

Zeev, I would like to suggest that emulating our president's misuse of the word "terror" for terrorism is a bad idea. Terror is an emotion. Terrorism is a tactic. Some might say it is an innocent mistake, but the paranoid side of me fears that Bush is setting a precedent for making whoever we deem a potential attacker responsible for our fears, whether well founded or not.

"The only thing he wants is the extermination of all Palestinians"

You're starting to sound like the Israelis now.

Sylvester80 has so far refused to deny that he thinks the 9/11 attacks were justified. I wonder why?

You support your butcher fascist Nazi Arafat and his like with nothing but opinions.

Too bad you ONLY speak out against the violence of one side.

"Such a theory stands the 2nd law of thermodynamics on its head."

Hogwash. I disproved that, and you haven't proven otherwise.

Looks like Sharon needed some extra votes... "killing 12 Palestinians". I guess retaliatory suicide bombings can not be far behind...

Violence begets violence.

Jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man in all the Bibles I have seen.

So far the deterrent effect of capital punishment seems to be entirely theoretical. I see ethical problems with imposing the ultimate penalty based on what someone thinks the result will be.

Secondly, there is a serious moral issue with imposing an irreversible penalty given the existence of people who are wrongly convicted. My uncle, for example, was convicted of a murder that someone else later confessed to. If he had been executed, there wouldn't have been a thing anyone could have done about it.

Mlsoft, you wrote:

"In simplest terms, the second law of thermodynamics states that over time, entropy increases as organized forms decay into greater states of randomness and chaos. Evolution states that over time, life evolves from a state of disorganized chaos into ever more complex and higher life forms based on random chance.

The two are not compatible."

If the coming into being of higher life forms destroyed entropy, that would be true regardless of whether it happened by evolution or through creation. So creation theory would violate the second law of thermodynamics every bit as much as evolution theory.

A more serious objection is how do you eliminate the possibility that the orderliness of complex life forms might come about at the cost of an even greater disorderliness of other types? Living things spend their entire lives converting orderly forms of energy into heat, which is a disorderly form of energy. After entropy ran its course, there would be no more sources of energy for living things to convert. There is nothing in evolution theory that says it will continue to work in the absence of energy sources.

Man oh man - trying to feed restaurant food to a teenager - how perverted can you get? <g>

"At the time of the arrest, NBC station WNYT-TV of Albany reported that William Scott Ritter Jr. - Ritter's full name - was charged with trying to lure a 16-year-old girl to a restaurant."

What are you saying, that the second law of thermodynamics argues against evolution? If so, how?

Sylvester is absent because his wife is having surgery.

http://www.investorshub.com/boards/read_msg.asp?message_id=694872

Sara, I don't see why there is a need to prove that Iraq has WMD. It is proven fact that they had them at one time, they have engaged in unprovoked aggression in the past under the same leader as they have today, and they are right now, today, delaying the inspectors from visiting certain sites and preventing them from interviewing certain scientists. Do you not see the gravity of these facts?

They have an obligation to cooperate with the inspectors, and instead they are actively hampering their work. What possible motive could they have for doing so if they were not trying to hide things they are prohibited from having? Doesn't that scare you even a little bit?

What do you mean, not the same? It depends on the provisions of the treaty. It is constitutionally permitted for the U.S. to agree to treaties which limit what we would otherwise have the sovereign right to do. I suspect there is no treaty written that does not limit our government's actions in one way or another. I presume that the establishment of the U.N. in the first place involved our signing a treaty. I'm not saying that we have signed any treaties that require us to get the U.N.'s permission to go to war, but if we did, there is nothing in the Constitution to prohibit it. Notice also that as written, the Constitution appears to give treaties equal status to itself and federal law in being the supreme law of the land.

As for breaking a treaty, all laws, including the Constitution itself, can be repealed.

"Nowhere in the Constitution is authority given any branch of government to subjugate our decisions to another government or organization."

This is not true. Article II, Section 2 gives the President the power to enter into treaties with the advice and consent of the Senate, and Article VI makes them part of the supreme law of the land along with the Constitution and laws made pursuant to it.

http://www.archives.gov/exhibit_hall/charters_of_freedom/constitution/constitution_transcription.htm...

"would it be ok if iraq sent missiles into israel again? after all they are still at war, iraq refusing to sign a peace agreement in 1948 after its invasion of both Palestine and Israel"

No it would not be OK. Resolution 687, which Iraq agreed to as a condition of the cease-fire of the Gulf War, prohibits them from having or using ballistic missiles of greater than 150 km range. Israel is farther away than that. I don't know whether Iraq has cruise missiles, though.

Ergo, I don't know what you mean about the letter of the law, but you wrote "I am just questioning this Saddamn is in violation of UN agreements stuff," and that's why I thought it would be useful for people to read the actual resolution that Saddam is being accused of violating. I see that the U.N. Web site is back up, so here again is the page where people can access Resolution 687.

http://www.un.org/Docs/scres/1991/scres91.htm

In particular note the following:

Sections 8 through 13 require Iraq to reveal the locations of its chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles with range greater than 150 km, and items related to the foregoing, and to place them under the control of specified international agencies for removal, destruction, or rendering harmless. It requires Iraq to "unconditionally agree" to the above, and it provides for ongoing monitoring and verification.

Section 33 made the cease-fire contingent on Iraq's acceptance of the provisions of this resolution.

According to the U. N. Web site, Iraq accepted Resolution 687 on April 6, 1991.

http://www.un.org/Depts/unscom/Chronology/resolution687.htm

In November, Resolution 1441 reaffirmed the requirements of Resolution 687 and provided for renewed inspections.

http://www.un.org/Docs/scres/2002/sc2002.htm

"My question to you is does the USA have the same obligation to adhere to the rulings of the UN? Do we go to war regardless of what the Security Council wants?"

I would guess that in general the U.S. is obligated to the same degree as anyone else. However, I don't know whether there is anything in U.N. resolutions or international law to require countries to obtain U.N. permission before going to war. If the U.N. declines to pass a resolution calling for war with Iraq, it seems to me that this would just mean that the U.N. was not placing its stamp of approval on it, but would not constitute a prohibition of it.

Leaving aside the legalities, if the danger is grave enough, then yes we should go to war regardless of whether we can convince the other members of the Security Council. The question of whether it is grave enough is, of course, not an easy one, but I do note that Iraq is as of right now delaying the inspectors' access to some sites, and preventing them from interviewing some scientists. If they are allowed to get away with that, then Resolution 687 might as well never have been written.

You cited sources for your points one and two, but it would be helpful if you could also do so for points three and four.

"Do the agreements and decisions of the UN equally apply to the President of the USA?"

It depends on how the resolution is worded. Security Council Resolution 687 is the one which forbids Iraq from having certain weapons, and those provisions apply only to Iraq.

Unfortunately the UN Web site is down right now, but when it comes back up you should be able to access it through this link:

http://www.un.org/Docs/scres/1991/scres91.htm

Today it was reported that Hussein is denying the inspectors access to some scientists. What do you think we should do about that? Speak sternly to him?

What is your belief based on? The come back appears to have fizzled.

I don't think it was a negotiation. The U.N. made a demand in the form of Resolution 687, and Iraq accepted that demand as a condition of the cease-fire.

http://www.un.org/Docs/scres/1991/scres91.htm

All nations have the right of self defense. As far as I know all the nations you listed except Iraq have the right to develop nuclear weapons if they so choose, and of course Pakistan, India, and Israel already have them. Iraq does not have that right, because of the restrictions they agreed to at the end of the Gulf War.

I think it's very naive to say that Iraqi nuclear weapons would be no threat to the U.S.

I'm not saying you were unclear, I'm saying I disagree with you. The winning side in a war always kills more people than the losing side. Are we supposed to be outraged by this inevitable fact of life?

War itself is a moral outrage. That is why we need to be sure of our justification before embarking on one. The 9/11 attacks certainly provided all the justification we needed to go to war with those who planned and ordered those attacks, and the nation which harbored them and refused to give them up.

From what I've heard, much industrial production in support of the Japanese war effort was distributed among the residential neighborhoods, so I don't know whether maximizing civilian casualties was the intent or not. Nevertheless, I doubt that every bombing target in that war was justified morally and militarily.

It's awfully easy to sit here in the comfort of our computer rooms 60 years later and second guess people who were trying to deal with a very desperate situation world wide. World War II was very much a war against civilians. Those who defend trying to maximize civilian casualties today are in effect arguing for a return to the bad old days.

If the other groups you mentioned were perceived as a threat to the U.S., I'm sure that Bush would be just as interested in them as in Iraq. The U.S. does not have the means to right every wrong in the world. Attempting to do so would spread our military way too thin to be effective, and would undoubtedly cause us to be perceived by the rest of the world as more of a threat than they already do.

Saddam is a genocidal war criminal but is there a reason he can no longer be "contained"?

If he gets nuclear weapons that would certainly be a reason.

The Bush Administration says that Iraq must disarm themselves of WMDs as they agreed to do, and that they must demonstrate that they have done so. Meanwhile Blix says that Iraq is not "actively cooperating" with the inspectors, so the outlook is not promising.

"Mr Ed, are there other countries that are in non-compliance with UN resolutions and should they be next on our cross-hairs?"

If you're talking about the U.S.'s crosshairs, I think one has to consider the degree to which the other countries you speak of are a threat to the U.S., as well as the need to not spread our military too thin.

Do you have any doubt that a nuclear Iraq would be a threat to the U.S.?

I keep hoping that Saddam will see which side of the bread the butter is on and change his ways as others have done, but so far I've been disappointed. Still, I agree with you that the wisdom of going into Iraq is something that needs to be debated.

"From what I hear more died in Afghanistan than on 9-11 yet where is our outrage at them dieing at our hands."

This numbers game is totally bogus. There is no rule in law or morality that a nation which is attacked has to stop fighting back when the number of casualties they inflict equals the number they have received. The purpose of the war in Afghanistan was not to get even, it was to destroy the ability of our attackers to attack us again.

Actually, I wasn't asking if the 9/11 attacks were justified, I was trying to find out if Sylvester thinks they were.

Regarding your question, this has not always been the case historically, but I believe that the U.S. currently tries to minimize civilian casualties. The perpetrators of 9/11 were trying to maximize civilian casualties. Huge difference, IMO.

I don't believe it is possible to go to war without causing civilian casualties. I also believe it is both wrong and ineffective to try to MAXIMIZE civilian casualties, as Al Qaeda does.

So far we haven't left the down channel that started Friday morning.

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