Faith

Well you are wrong. Because you have FAITH that none of these things will happen.

Listen according to the information you gave me, its not 40 times, you need to go have your work checked.1 au is indeed 93 million miles.
0.10 AU =930,000 miles.The Moon is 250,000 miles away, x40 =10 million.
Big difference between 930,000 and 10 million.It's still just a stones throw away.
The other part is that it passed almost directly overhead. So even though it missed us vertically, it hit us horizontally, relativly speaking.You didn't answer my question, just what are the odds? I will accept any number you tell me for purpose of this discussion.

You base your faith on the odds, period.
I am not saying this is good or bad but it is true.

You base your faith on the odds, period.
I am not saying this is good or bad but it is true.

Please try to convince all the insurance company's of this nation that same thought, and maybe our insurance will go down. That is wrong, if it happens this year, then the odds are one to one.
Just because we are ignorant about what goes into making up odds, doesn't mean that it is a trillion to one, or one to one.
But since we really don't know what would make these odds, then we put faith in what we believe are safe odds. Then we put hope that it won't happen to us, which is, by the way, blind faith.

That is a completely irrelevant comparison, for which you are now famous for. It means nothing and is the rantings of a lunatic.Your kind of reasoning is beyond baloney. I guess to you that Halle Berry and Oprah Winphrey are both likely to produce the same results because they are both girls. But my guess is you would rather not see your husband go on a date with Halle Berry.What is it you are trying to say? Because I can eat clams, does it mean I will never get a bad one?You cannot predict the odds of certain things, and comparing what I'm saying to jumping off a bridge, is like comparing a spec to the universe.Be real, say something relevant. Your trying to make science look good by comparing the odds of jumping off a bridge with the odds of something catacylismic happening to the earth, what kind of fool would do that? Either way you are putting your faith in something that isn't 100% correct?

If you live your life counting on the probability that the sun will rise tomorrow, then you have faith in it.Unless you are saying you don't have faith in anything? If so could you please explain how that is possible?

So your telling me a mass that wieghs 194,090,000,000,000,000 metric tons (1/4 the mass of the moon) traveling at 27miles per second couldn't effect our rotation if hit in the right spot?I would even bet that it might eventually cause a collision between us and the moon, due to a disruptance in our orbits.And yes I fully understand about all the effects of gravitational pull against our earth.

I'm having a bad day. Thats what I get for trying to do math and read when I'm tired. I apologizeBut it's still close. The other thing I was saying that when view from earth it passed almost directly in front of the North star which means it was directly over the earths poles. So it may have missed us one way, but it was in line with us another way.I don't know about you, but to me its sort of an eye opener, and makes me feel that we are just a little more vulnerable than one would think. This doesn't change the way I look at life though, just makes more of a realist I guess.I took some great pictures of that comet. The tail was strecthed clear across the sky at one point. We could actually see movement of the nucleus in my 8" meade reflector.

Right, so we have faith that it won't happen.And yes I stand corrected about the distance of the comet. My mistake. I think I was getting confused with another object that came much closer. Its been awhile since I've been doing astronomy. so I forgot the numbers.Either way any of these torino scales or professional astronomers or NASA will tell you straight out that there could very well be something that they cannot account for, so we have faith that it won't happen, because the evidence shows us that it doesn't happen that often.

EK=(v2)MV2Also, you didn't even know how damaging a gamma ray burst was, or what's causing them,so how were you going to address my concerns over it?This message has been edited by riVeRraT, 09-01-2004 11:14 PM

Which means.....Ta DA! Nothing.You just don't get it.

Thats a bunch of BS too. So your saying we belive in God totally on evidence that cannot be tested?Or evidence that cannot be tested by the current scientific method?Science in designed to not include the supernatural, but some scientist keep trying to find it, so at least some think its there, and can be tested.It to me is amazing what people will reason away. Sometimes it's right there in front of your face, yet you still deny it. Evolution is not completely testable, yet you believe in it.Look everyone, I'm not saying its good or bad to put faith believing that your skull will get crushed should you jump off a bridge or whatever. What I'm saying is that it all requires an element of faith.
Why won't you admit it? Why get so defensive?
I believe in many scientific theories, but I realize that there is faith involved.Then also the majority of the public who are scientifically illiterate and don't actually go out and test all these scientific theories themselves, are believing not only in science by faith, but the scientists who tell them that these things are true. Tell me thats not true.

It would be so nice if the rest of the world thought that way.

No, its actually in direct support of what I am saying, here I will explain it to you since you don't get it, and you don't want to catch either.I never said it isn't more likely that I will crush my skull if I jump off a bridge into the pavement, you said that.
What I'm saying is that it is not 100% sure that I will crush my skull or die, since people fall out of planes and survive, and people fall off buildings and survive, or the remote chance that a truck full of hay will drive by and break my fall, or an earthquake will happen and the pavemen will open up to a soft bed of fertile dirt. I personally knew a guy who fell 7 stories off a building and only broke his back. When I was a kid I fell 15 feet off a garage roof and landed on a wooden horse with only a minor scratch on my neck. I also could flip during the fall, and actually not land on my head at all. Their are just to many variables for me to put my complete FAITH in the idea that I would die 100%.
So your odds of me crushing my skull turn out to be not something that you really can predict with any degree of accuracy at all. I also believe that odds are person specific. You might say, since 1,000,000 people have jumped off bridges and 900,000 have crushed their skulls, that you have a 90% chance of crushing your skull. This observation is completely inaccurate. We can only say that 90% of the people who have jumped already have crushed their skulls, but to say that it would happen to me, would be guessing. To have FAITH that it would happen to me, would be IMO wrong. Maybe God doesn't want me to die yet, so I actually have 0% chance of crushing my skull, can you prove me wrong?What we can say with 100% acurracy is that if gravity is in effect, and nothing is in the way, and no outside forces interfere, that something will fall if dropped. This is a scientific theory that I could accept. What are the odds that this would change, I think just about 0%. But if there is an odd that could change it, then it would indeed change one day. So, I am not going to let that be my God. I have already proven that I do not have any pride. I have no problem admitting when I'm wrong, I have done it a few times already in these forums. I wish I could say the same for others. I can always learn from others, as I do not know it all. I can even learn from an uneducated homeless person, drunk out of his mind on a street in NYC. Or I could learn from someone who hates God and worships the devil. I can even learn from you.
So if you can't admitt that there is an ELEMENT of faith to believe in science, then you seem to be the one with pride problems. I will remind you again, I am not saying if putting your faith in science is a good or bad thing.This message has been edited by riVeRraT, 09-03-2004 05:39 AM