Lightice: though to be fair, there are plenty of things presented in scientific discussions as theories that fail that particular test as well. String/M-Theory, and LQG come to mind. As do "Interpretations" of quantum mechanics, though in that case, people usually have the good manners to recognize that the question…

Nope. There's no such thing as "proof" in science. There are probabilities and questions of "how close of a confidence band can we put around this data, and does our theory fall inside of it?". Your equivocating on evolution as "still called a theory after all" suggests you're one of those people who don't understand…

Everything done by science is called a theory. Theory is a technical word describing a working model used to make predictions. If it turns out that it makes predictions that are different from data, then it is either modified to better fit the data (and then you make a new set of predictions based on the…

Raft was some of my earliest exposure to hard SF. Picked it up at a used book sale when I was 10 or 11. It was a little over my head at the time, but I took another shot at it when I was maybe 14, and found it fantastic.

My passage is dealing with the resurrection of both Christ and the Christians.

You're the first other person I've heard reference the Xeelee Sequence in a long time.

Which is unrelated to the resurrection, which is why I'm confused about him citing those passages in relation to his comment about the resurrection.

See the link in my reply to CMHosin a few comments back form yours.

In the Greek, the word translated as "meet" in "meet the Lord in the air" is the one used to how you greet a returning dignitary to escort them back into the city.

The resurrection is the central element of Christianity.

You're welcome :)

My father actually wrote an article taking apart the doctrine of the rapture for Christianity Today last summer, and I remember him getting some very nasty emails in the aftermath. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/june/whogetsleftbehind.html

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/fansites/joshw24/news/?a=44010

That clip is ridiculously awesome.

#2 asks for opinions on specific policy implementations, rather than asking them to outline their own blueprint for addressing the problem (and starts by assuming that climate change is the biggest ecological problem we're facing). As a green libertarian, my views on the role of government and of private ownership in…

This just makes me miss T:SCC :(

Can someone translate the text on America and Americans?

Not when the latency is large relative to the time-scale of the event you're communicating about. A 7 minute descent and 15 minute latency? Even if you see something going wrong, it's too late to correct by the time you're finding out, let alone devise a response and send it back.

Not really a big deal for must of us. Protestants vary in response, but the Catholics have a little more organization and are pretty on top of the issue: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7399661.stm And of course C.S. Lewis's space trilogy is largely forgotten among Narnia and his theological works, but they deal with the…

I'd be stoked if Eccleston came back, but he is really opposed to the idea. McGann/Tennant/Smith is not a terribly unlikely combo though.