Tolerate the Christian right ... WHY ?

[Seth]

Name one place in the Solar System where human life can exist more than briefly (minutes) without extensive technical support structure, other than the troposphere of Earth.

We can see it all.

Unless you think it just all disappears when the Sun comes up.

Now you've done it...he'll be starting on his "life, but not as we know it" phase now...

But of course. And why not? Don't think small, think big, think diversely, think like any of a thousand science fiction writers have thought for more than a hundred years about how life might exist under radically different environmental conditions.

We know next to nothing about life. We don't even know how life got started right here on earth yet, much less how or if life exists somewhere else in something other than organic carbon-based form suited to our earthly environment. It's manifest ignorance to claim that because humans cannot exist outside the atmosphere of earth "without extensive technical support structure" that this proves anything at all about life on other planets and how it may be constituted.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

If God Made the cosmos Why is almost every bit of it instantly Deadly to life ?

Because he is an evil bastard?
~99.9999% of the Universe is hard vacuum.
~99.9999% of what's left is flaming nuclear fireballs.
~99.9999% of what's left from that is cold interstellar gas.
~99.9999% of what's left from that is barren, airless balls of rock or gas giants, neither of which can sustain life.
~99.9999% of what's left from that is barely habitable planets like Mars.
Then we come to Earth.

And your scientific evidence pointing to any of the above is....??

The best you can do is to make some generalized claims based on what scientists have seen and inferred from what they have seen through the dim glass of our best observational devices that actually tell us very little about the composition of the universe outside our field of view.

There is actually no evidence at all that life cannot be sustained on "airless balls of rock or gas giants" or that "almost every bit of it is instantly Deadly to life" (sic). You're suffering from an anthropocentric confirmation bias.

And if God is an evil bastard, all the more reason to do what he commands, don't you think? Unless you choose to suffer eternal torment as a part of holding up your atheistic ideals. Sounds like a remarkably bad plan to me.

I borrowed those numbers from Neil de Grasse Tyson. I assume you will now call him an uppity nigger?

[Schneibster]

Oh, noes, I forgotted, teh night sky is teh BLACK.

[Seth]

~99.9999% of the Universe is hard vacuum.
~99.9999% of what's left is flaming nuclear fireballs.
~99.9999% of what's left from that is cold interstellar gas.
~99.9999% of what's left from that is barren, airless balls of rock or gas giants, neither of which can sustain life.
~99.9999% of what's left from that is barely habitable planets like Mars.
Then we come to Earth.

And your scientific evidence pointing to any of the above is....??

Umm, have you ever been outside the house at night?

Yes, I have. And everything I've seen in the night sky is an awfully long way away, which makes it difficult to even quantify how much stuff there is out there, not to mention the details of that composition and how it may or may not support life.

Ummm, it's dark. Maybe you forgot.

That's because there's not an awful lot of stuff out there.

That would substantiate Gawdzilla's first claim, obviating your argument.

Oh, noes, I forgotted, teh night sky is teh BLACK.

Oh, is it? Is it really?

Logan Pass & Milky Way 2011 014.jpg (92.57 KiB) Viewed 1531 times

Many Glaciers Lodge 021.jpg (82.76 KiB) Viewed 1531 times

Nope, sorry, you fail. See all that light in those photos? It's not really black at all. You're suffering from anthropocentric confirmation bias. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean the light's not there. That's a fault of your primitive eye construction.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

ETA: From the introduction, by Virginia Heinlein:

This book was so different from what was being sold to the general public, or to the science fiction reading public in 1961 when it was published, that the editors required some cutting and removal of a few scenes that might then have been offensive to public taste.
...
In the context of 1960, Stranger In A Strange Land was a book that his publishers feared-- it was too far off the beaten path. So, in order to minimize possible losses, Robert was asked to cut the manuscript down to 150,000 words-- a loss of about 70,000 words. Other changes were also required, before the editor was willing to take a chance on publication.

But they didn't put the 70k words back into the re-release.

Sure as hell they did, for the 1991 30th anniversary version: http://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Strange- ... ap_title_0

I still have not managed to get a hold of that version.

That's the one I have. Not seeing that much difference between my paperback and the 1991 version.

[Schneibster]

Oh, is it? Is it really?

Logan Pass & Milky Way 2011 014.jpg

Many Glaciers Lodge 021.jpg

The Palisade-Star Motion small.jpg

Nope, sorry, you fail. See all that light in those photos? It's not really black at all. You're suffering from anthropocentric confirmation bias. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean the light's not there. That's a fault of your primitive eye construction.

You don't know very much about how film and cameras work, do you?

The light diffracts. That's one of those new-fangled effects they only discovered in the eighteenth century.

The stars in those photographs are spots; the real stars are points. They look like dots in those pictures because of the aperture of the camera.

Because they look like dots, they make the dark parts of the sky look light. And the remainder is reciprocity failure, which you'd know about if you'd ever done real astrophotography (I have).

Sorry you're having so much trouble with reality.

[Schneibster]

That's the one I have. Not seeing that much difference between my paperback and the 1991 version.

Have you ever read the 1961 version, with only 160,000 words?

[Gawdzilla Sama]

That's the one I have. Not seeing that much difference between my paperback and the 1991 version.

Have you ever read the 1961 version, with only 160,000 words?

I read the paperback published in 1964.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I have my 1991 on the table here. I re-read it about two years ago. I was frustrated that there wasn't much difference between the 1964 and the 1991. The difference I saw was measured in paragraphs, not chapters.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I have my 1991 on the table here. I re-read it about two years ago. I was frustrated that there wasn't much difference between the 1964 and the 1991. The difference I saw was measured in paragraphs, not chapters.

Oh, and I've read the book maybe one hundred times, maybe more.

[Schneibster]

OK, well it has an extra 70,000 words.

And Virginia says they originally cut it in 1961 partly for length, and partly for content; I was talking about the contents that were not acceptable in 1961. And I quoted her saying it in the introduction to the 1991 version.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

OK, well it has an extra 70,000 words.

And Virginia says they originally cut it in 1961 partly for length, and partly for content; I was talking about the contents that were not acceptable in 1961. And I quoted her saying it in the introduction to the 1991 version.

Understood, and it was the "free sex" bits that were trimmed in the hardback, I imagine. The pre-marital sex was bad enough, but the tiny hint of homosexual/bisexual thought was freaky in 1961. People were so up tight then. For example, in Indiana it was illegal to be a male homosexual, but not to be a lesbian. They simply refused to consider the idea, much like the urban legend about Queen Victoria.

[Schneibster]

Them, and the part about explicitly eating him for dinner afterward as opposed to hinting at it, and a fair bit of the more outrageous stuff in the church they visited, IIRC.

Point being, the stuff in the church; which hints at the coming theocracy of Revolt in 2100. That's what I was talking about originally.

Wow, that was a long digression.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Them, and the part about explicitly eating him for dinner afterward as opposed to hinting at it, and a fair bit of the more outrageous stuff in the church they visited, IIRC.

Point being, the stuff in the church; which hints at the coming theocracy of Revolt in 2100. That's what I was talking about originally.

Wow, that was a long digression.

The Fosterites were my favorite part of the book. I used "Fosterite" as a filler for the "Religion" block on a lot of Navy paperwork.

[Schneibster]

That's amusing.

Personally I'm a Cargo Cultist.